


Bantam Wars

by americanjedi



Series: Wee Doctor [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Accidentally Inventing a Super Genius, Agape, Angst, Canon Characters Intermingled, Children in Dangerous Situations, Comfort, Conspiracies, F/M, Fairy tale weddings, Gen, Giant Dogs, Hope, Interacial Couples, It's just a war, It's not as dark as it sounds, Kidfic that's not Kidfic, Mentions of past abuse of a minor, Parental!Lestrade, Sentiment Makes You Stronger, There's Only One Timeline, Time Travel, Unconventional Families, Vague Discussions of Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-04 12:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 25
Words: 87,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americanjedi/pseuds/americanjedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John thought, when he lost his past and gained an irritatingly eight year old physique, that the mad scientist Dr. Grendel had almost ended him.  But now, pushed away by Sherlock after the Great Game, he has new purpose again.  To find Dr. Grendel and either fix what's been broken or destroy any remnant of the time ray forever.  With Tim Dimmock, his brother in arms and the protective shadow of the fabricated genius W, John Watson is off to war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is! The third and final! Betas are once again the clever Caroline and the terrific tentacle_love, hugs to them! You'd think after taking a month off I'd have all sorts of things to say, but I don't really. Just, here it is, hope you like it! Check me out at thursdayplaid.tumblr.com for updates, fanthings and occasional reblogs of lovely things.

Tim pulled up to a little cottage in the middle of nowhere and leaned his head back against the seat. His breath was slow and sharp, like the prolonged drag of a razor. “I don’t enjoy killing people.”

“He wasn’t a nice man,” John wasn’t going to apologize for almost getting captured by a psychopath’s henchman. “You did what was necessary.” Everything was softly gray and yellow with the night and the headlights; the soft whispered rumble of the car, John felt almost that none of it was quite real. Like a dream had while he was awake. His body tired and heavy as if it was filled with sand, it was very easy to feel small, right then. They had driven for some time; John was certain at least a day and a half. But Tim wouldn’t stop, except when he had to. John slept through most of it, but he remembered seeing Tim furiously scowling, watching him practically clench his jaw and hands and shoulders through half opened eyes. When Tim finally pulled off onto a narrow road that seemed to lead to the middle of a forest John was very grateful. His bladder was starting to make itself known again.

The cabin was very round.

The response to John’s pronouncement, after such a long stretch of silence was simply a small sigh. Silently John watched Tim go to the back, grab a brown paper bag and then walk around to John’s side. John looked up through the window at him; it was a bit of a shock when the car door opened. Everything was slow.

“John, you look half dead.”

He knew what was coming and saw no reason to fight it. He had fought enough; he was finished fighting. He'd have to fight again. They were going to go to war. Them and whoever else Tim had enlisted while John followed after Sherlock. With only the whisper of a name for protection? They were madder than Grendel. John winced back in his seat, his chest feeling cracked open, free and frightened at the same time.

He blushed at the shame of it, but lifted his arms up toward Tim.

Anyone else would think he was a kid, acting like a kid. But Tim made a kind sympathetic sound, and with a hand so practiced it almost made him cry, Tim scooped him up and held him close. The smell of the paper bag was very close to John’s face. It smelled warm and organic, familiar. He let Tim carry him like that, resting his head on his shoulder, half asleep. Tim knew he was a grown man, that this was the same as one bloke carrying another. One soldier carrying another. He was tired. Tim understood that too. 

The car went silent and dark, but Tim seemed to know the path well enough, humming gently to himself, the vibration of it light as a hummingbird under John’s cheek. There was the fumble of having no real free hands, and trying to reach into a pocket and get the door open. Dimmock didn’t turn on any overhead lights, just the yellow orange light over the stove. He didn’t say anything when John curled his arms around his neck, just hummed, walking back and forth in the dark, soft hold of the cottage, like fingertips against the skin. It fascinated, the way that all new safe places fascinated. John tried not to look at anything yet. He didn’t really want to half see anything, think anything too hard about the cottage yet. 

Other than the bathroom where he had to look out of necessity, it could have been any place really, with his eyes closed, could have been central London. He ended up leaning cheek down on the bathroom counter staring at a clamour of bar soaps in exhaustion so that Tim had to come in, muttering about stress reactions and lifting John’s trembling body back up against his chest, steady hands working circles on his back. This wouldn’t work if John wasn’t a small child, and for once John didn’t resent it. Tim rested his cheek against the top of John’s head. He didn’t hold it against them. They were both pretending.

He must have fallen asleep because when he woke up he was nested in an overly stuffed sofa which seemed to agree with the circular theme the cottage sported. It took him an age to get up the will to leave the comforting softness of his little nest, and then an age again to wade out of it. He was in a sitting room, facing a high, sturdy coffee table and a stone fire place, the wooden mantle above it draped in a menagerie of lace and strange small bits of things. There appeared to be a crystal doorknob and a small flock of china birds.

“Norton is rich and American,” Tim said from behind him, leaning in the doorway of the sitting room. The doorway was strangely, also round, but in a way that suggested it was only that way because someone had discovered the need to move furnishings after its initial construction. “And in addition a bit like a bower bird.”

“Pardon?” John blinked at him. He looked… melancholy. Not quite, but that was the only thing John could think of that was happy and sad at the same time.

“The man who owns the cottage. He collects things a bit, Norton. I’m glad you’re up. I didn’t want to wake you, but I didn’t want to eat lunch alone.” The last part was said gently, achingly, like discussion of an open wound. They may both be rawer than either would like to admit, but both quietly ignored the implication of it.

“No point in sleeping any more than I need,” John tried, smiling awkwardly. The morning had come regardless of how tired either of them was, John supposed, and with morning what they had pretended had faded with the night. No more playing at anything. He was a man again, if not in body, and Tim had neither interest nor inclination to pretend otherwise for both their sakes. All the better for it really.

“Clothes in the arm chair,” Tim nodded, “and bathroom down the hall. My room's upstairs so don’t worry about disturbing anything.”

There were a pair of jeans, small comfortable looking loafers and a brown cable sweater just a size too big in the seat of an overstuffed armchair with a little flowery peach-y, yellow-y pattern. It was very maiden aunt-ish

“I had children once,” Dimmock smiled at him and before going to the kitchen to mutter in starts about spaghetti sauce. “Should be a little while longer; probably have time for a quick bath if you want one. Don’t drown in the tub.”

They ate at the kitchen table like… a family. Like two brothers, John laughing in high notes, slightly less hateful now he wasn’t paranoid about sounding like a squeak toy. Like a child. All the adrenaline was out of his system, leaving him. The whole cottage smelled delicious, like onion and tomato sauce with real beef and rosemary.

After Tim dragged in an old boxy cassette tape player from somewhere and they listened to something with a laugh track he only half paid attention to, John allowed himself to be highly ironically tucked into a make shift bed arranged on the sofa. He had once done the same to Sherlock when he had the flu. Tucked him in like that, patted him on the head. Tim laughed at his little joke. It was meant to be funny. Meant to be ironic because Dimmock knew he was a grown man too. John suddenly loved Tim, more than the affection he had previously. Wished for, and guiltily scrubbed out the idea of, a grumpy, puggish brother instead of a loud, bitter sister. He only hoped he was a good mock brother in return. “Sorry,” John half-whispered, squeezing Tim’s shoulder.

“No apologies,” Tim’s smile, thin but tender, didn’t falter. “You’ve done your share. You need to rest.”

When John dreamed it was of the desert, miles of it, gently curving. It felt like the soft-strong curve of a woman’s body, the curl from her hip to her waist and up her back. It made him feel safe. He walked across the sand, and loved it; the burning annihilation that was the sun was present but very far away. When he finally woke he didn’t feel tired or frightened.

“So, Godfrey Norton?” John asked at breakfast. They had reheated spaghetti, neither of them really minded. Tim would drop off the stolen car as soon as breakfast was over, retrieve supplies and his own car and then return. John would be alone in the little cottage with no telly and no internet, but the old stereo, lots of books and a little garden in the back. When Tim returned he’d bring his Grendel hatebox and the two of them will try to track the madman down again. For now, while things were hot Tim would work in the field while John worked the network behind the scenes, pencil and paper mostly, a modified clatter of Davey’s little dancing men. It was quicker than typing two fingered. It was backward considering their specialties, but at this point there were four brilliant minds after him. Too many to consider letting his face leave the cottage for a good month. And they had done something similar, Tim sending him reports and John texting the Holmes as W.

It wouldn’t be as good as a mystery with Sherlock, but Sherlock didn’t want John anymore. He belonged with Dimmock, a new brother in arms and one that still needed to be healed. Few things appealed to John more. He was a fixer of things. There could be a new friendship here, there could still be danger and excitement and tea. So instead of badgering someone to eat John tried not to fall out of his chair laughing while Tim told about dropping in on Godfrey Norton, who at the time had an exceptionally beautiful mustache and a potentially dangerous disagreement with Argentinian authorities over some limited release Russian dubbed DVD box sets. 

They spent a month at the cottage, two weeks together, two weeks with Tim in and out sporadically while things were organized. While Tim flew blondish ginger and bespectacled to Germany, acquired a new flat in Paris with John blathering in his ear about windows and fire escapes, raided a Swedish laboratory with a laundry list of scientific odds and ends for their nervous Austrian scientist, then took a boat, a snowmobile and a train back to England to deliver them, and check on the progress of developing a way to reverse the effects of the ray with what information they had. His trail had been a long stumbling stack of places and people. The whole way enduring the sound of John in his earpiece issuing strict doctor’s orders to drink lots of water, to eat lots of vegetables and to avoid the curry since they both knew he would only regret it later. Over the miles Tim’s voice, warm and gentle, complained back in words that in aggregate meant he loved John too.

Timothy Westmorland’s death passed in London as effortless as a dream, a whisper that brushed across the lips of gossips and then faded again just as quickly, his face only half remembered. Someone else came to empty the bins and clean the windows. Tim watched the edges of his false life fade away effortlessly and wasn’t troubled by it at all. It was only a soap bubble that had persisted for longer than expected.

John wanted to go with him and threaten Bad Davey and ask after Rooster and bed down with Bailey’s crew. But that wasn’t safe. Instead he waited till the end of that long month, not too bad with fresh veg and a chance to go over the stacks of pictures, dates, facts, invoices, bits of obscure evidence that made no sense but was there, sketching out a life. One they needed to find.

Tim arrived at the end of his European tour looking a little lighter, but still with that gentle indent between his eyebrows, that tendency to look away slightly in the disappointment of a lonely child. That disappeared as soon as John descended on him with his notebook in one hand and a map in the other. “We need to have Adair move to England.”

“Can I put my bag down?”

John took his bag, wasn’t quite knocked over with it and after a moment slung it under the kitchen table instead of trying for a chair. “We need to move Adair to England. He’s starting to get boxed in at work, lose his efficacy, and apparently he already has family in England, and a friend who works in the government has recently transferred over. He’s perfect. Ideally we can get him over to one of the same building where Mycroft works. Added security. And! He’s being wasted where he is, he’s an excellent mathematician.”

“Are you alright?” Tim stared at John’s tapping foot, the corner of his mouth slowly curling up.

“Yes,” John crossed his arms tight to his chest, ignoring the crinkling paper.

“You’ve been into the tea,” Tim grinned at him.

John made a face at him and boosted himself up on a kitchen chair.

“You are thoroughly caffeinated.”

The replying expression was as irritated and it was twitchy. “Yes well, we have a lot going on and I just couldn’t-” he scrubbed at his forehead a moment. “I just couldn’t think. My brain was too full. I was just going too slow, so I speed things up a bit.”

“Can we go to the sitting room?” Tim asked, hip sagging against the kitchen table. 

Turning bright red, John flustered, “Sorry, I- Sorry.” Tim wandered off while John heated soup and made tea, carrying them in on the big wicker tray that lived against the side of the refrigerator. Laughing and looking tired in equal measure, Tim accepted both from where he curled on the large sofa. “So,” he sighed, inhaling his tea. “Ronnie Adair?”

“I don’t want to leave Mycroft alone.”

Over the soup bowl Tim’s face darkened.

“I’m not entirely sympathetic to him either.” John vibrated gently. “But it would be disastrous to leave him unattended. At least this way someone could tell us if he gets shot.”

“I’ll set something up later today,” he acquiesced.

“No,” John murmured from where he sat at the edge of the coffee table. “You rest. I forgot how much you’ve been doing while I lay around here picking lettuce and trying to put clues together. Take a nap.”

Sighing at him, Tim set the bowl aside, still holding the mug close with one hand. “I forgot how slow the internet used to be. Is now. And how long the train took, I was about to climb out and try just running home. Everyone uses wifi now, it makes me feel positively antsy. The only good thing about it is I can wander in and out of people’s computers at my leisure. But really! Is no one concerned about the holes in the system? I had to break into a couple secret experimental systems to feel like I was getting any work done on a secure line.”

“Alright future man,” John felt the corners of his mouth curling up while the waving of Tim’s free hand got positively passionate. “Sorry you’re stuck in the stone age with us.”

“Davey sends his love,” Tim receded back against the sofa cushions, half laughing at himself now. “He’s not going to make me kiss you again.”

“I couldn’t bear that. My face might fall off.”

“Aren’t you just hil-arious.”

John just grinned, cheeks round and bright.

“I know you would have liked to hear from him. I told him, we got into a bit of a scuffle, nothing to worry about,” he added when he saw John’s face. “It was mostly for show. He’ll send a note when he’s feeling more himself; this whole thing with Sherlock and Moriarty is throwing him.”

“I’ll be fine,” he bit his lip against asking if Tim had seen the Holmes brothers. It wouldn’t go over well. And he didn’t need to know. “Now observe,” he retrieved the map from where it was awkwardly folded next to him. “I have been brilliant.”

After a day of comparing notes and making battle plans, they put away the linens, vacuumed through the house and packed everything they could safely carry. Everything else was packed and moved into the attic of the cottage, neatly labeled _T and W_. Then that was it, Tim and John were going to France. When they could come back again John didn’t know, didn’t think about Sherlock or Baker Street, didn’t think about the mazework of London with everything anyone could want. Snow piled white and free of feet before changing to grey slush that turned the city (if you watched the news) into the set of a disaster movie. Chased through the fog are stretches of sparkling stars, better than diamonds, like the opening of smoggy eyelids. Comfort, adventure, home and strangeness, tea, books, Bond movies, almost all of his family. Sweet, grey suited, mad and brilliant London, politician, banker and glittering golden woman.

But he’s been dreaming of the desert. A woman just as gold, just as dangerous, if more subtle about it. And the one part of his family not in London, someone he chose out of mutual pain was going to France to fight Grendel and try to care if it killed him in the process.

“You ready?” Tim asked, duffel over one shoulder. He looked sharp, almost on the edge of dangerous, if not for the thick oversized jumper he’s using to hide John’s gun. John pulled his back pack up close, heavy with a kit that Tim brought him and a brand new Grey’s. They both have the touch of Davey about them, but Tim didn’t say and so John wasn’t asking.

“Yeah,” John smiled back, “Off to war.” 

 

**Mr. Adair, I believe you have some experience with my associate. We would like to talk to you. – W**


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caroline and tentacle_love riding into victory again. High fives all around. Have some Tim and John feels!

John was worrying at the corner of his Grey’s again. It was early morning, the sky a velvetly violet heading toward the lavender of early morning. Some of the car park lights were still on in front of the train station. Not that they were parked under a floodlight like that. Sleepy headed people walked past them. Mostly uni aged kids and people obviously headed for a holiday. On the way Folkestone had looked relaxed and peaceable in a way that only a resort town could. The lights were only on in necessity shops and in the back window of a bakery they passed. And, of course, the White Horse. He’d been here before, taken a picture, so he just stared at it in between trying not to worry at his Grey’s.

Tim gave him a sturdy look.

“I’m fine,” John barked at him.

“You’re not.” Tim had known him for less time than Sherlock, but already knew him in a way that Sherlock didn’t. Or maybe couldn’t. Sentiment cut into Sherlock’s belly in new unfathomable ways whereas Tim clung to it like a drowning man.

“Davey has too much to lose.”

“Look, Davey knows what he’s doing.” Tim pulled into parking, reaching for the glasses he had hung on his shirt collar. They were thin with gold coloured rims, not Tim’s style-flashy things made him nervous-with and some sort of treatment to the lenses so when they shifted they became opaque as a mirror. John’s face looked small and smooth when he saw himself reflected in a quick shift of the glasses. “And he knows it’s only a matter of time before Moriarty turns on him anyway. If he’s going to do something suicidal, let him do it on the time table he’ll be most likely to slide through alive.”

“Also this will be the most time we spend together,” John felt the need to point out. “All we really know about each other is that Grendel hit us both. And we both like chocolate and Bond. And we appreciate gun safety.” John licked his bottom lip. “And family. How we feel about family.”

“We get on well enough,” Tim shrugged, checking the cubbies of the car to make sure it was clean. Both of them had worn gloves, but there was always the chance of fallen hair, skin cells, their trapped breath. 

Running his tongue across his bottom lip again, John hesitated the barest moment before zipping his backpack closed. “I’d say I needed someone to reach the top shelf, but well…”

Grinning, Tim gently knocked his elbow into John’s shoulder, “Look who’s telling short jokes.” John pulled his woolen cap down to cover his ears, a pleased little cubbish smile making his face as pleasant as a fresh apple. “Now try not to wiggle too much. You’re still small or else this wouldn’t work, but if you start twitching we’re both going down in a pile.”

John nodded, shaking himself all over to get himself loose while Tim waited for him to lift his arms. He caught John with both hands and hefted him up against his chest. There was unsurprisingly the feeling of warmth, the solidness of Tim’s chest, the strange feeling of being braced and the fitting of bodies together. John steadied himself awkwardly; he hadn’t been carried since soon after he started walking, at least not carried like this. His smaller size had made him a popular practice partner in lift drills back in his army days. But then he was generally over someone’s shoulder like a scowly mink stole. But he knew this was something humans did. That this was fine. He pressed a fist to Tim’s collar bone until his anger left him calm and reasonable.

This felt strange-the warmth of Tim’s body, the feel of an arm boosting him up that he filtered under the same lens that helped get him through half a dozen spectacular medical school pranks and desert shenanigans and shrugged the whole thing off. There would be cameras everywhere of course. That was what this was about. John pressed his face into Tim’s neck and raised his arm up to protect the rest of his face. The perfect image of a sleepy child. They made it through to get their tickets, John’s face pressed into Tim’s collar while people spoke in soft voices around them.

They had talked about this when they were planning how to get past the security cameras. Talked about how John got upset when people mistook him for a child. How he went tense and battle ready, vibrating with disapproval. But if anyone was going to buy this John had to stay completely calm and relaxed. They thought of trying sleep deprevation to make him _actually_ sleepy, but that was more likely to just make him stroppy and more likely to tell people off. So instead John took long shallow breaths and practiced some of the meditation techniques that he had been taught for pain management.

Body loose, John just trusted, palms flat and relaxed against the curve of Tim’s shoulders, the soles of his feet gently tingling where they hung. Listened to the soft timbre of Tim’s humming, the way when someone asked about John and John shifted anxiously, Tim pressed his cheek to John’s head and murmured, “Hush little man, I’ve got you.”

“Can I take your bag for you?” it was a woman, vaguely Parisian accent.

“Yeah,” there was a subtle shift in Tim’s body. “Thanks. We’ve had a bit of a late night. Travel nerves.”

“I know what you mean,” John could hear the smile in her voice. She had a try at Tim who went tense, then flustered, then made faintly distressed sounds until she got the hint and left. As soon as she was gone and the curtain was pulled John was released. He stepped away while Tim wrangled the duffle up on the rack. John rolled his shoulders, jumped gently to shake out the irritation and subdermal rumble that was caused by someone hefting him. Even someone like Tim. Roost would never try it. He might curl up against John as a smaller, safer and (loathe as he was to admit it, cuddlier) proxy for his razor blade of a brother, but the social implications behind carrying people was a bit lost on him. Davey he would probably bite if he tried something so blatantly stupid. And Sherlock… if nothing else Sherlock respected him enough not to do that. With Tim it was barely okay for all its necessity.

Tim sat by the window hands tight over his knees.

That wasn’t a good look on him. “I didn’t think it would affect me so much.”

“Me neither.”

John stopped stretching his neck to go sit next to him. “You okay?”

Shaking his head Tim smiled at him, hands still tight but shoulders going loose. “Don’t worry about me little man. It’s good to have you here now, and safe. It’ll be easier to arrange Interpol in Paris anyway. You’ll arrange the meeting with Adair?”

“Yeah,” John made a face at him, but didn’t argue. Tim was generally self-sufficient when it came to feeding himself. 

“I’ll take a quick nap then, wake me when we arrive.” Without waiting for any more of an answer than a distracted nod from John, he curled up on the train bench, back to John. He wouldn’t have much time for one but then John supposed he only needed a little rest. Tim wrestled one armedly with his coat until he was able to shake it off by pure stubborn force of will and throw it over his head to keep out the light. It would have been funnier if Tim hadn’t driven them from one end of Britain to the other. Or if he didn’t look like he was carrying around half a century of care on his shoulders. Or as if there wasn’t the gun he had used to kill Moran currently peeking out from between his jumper and the back of his trousers. 

John had been a soldier, albeit one who primarily saw most of his action in a field hospital and not the front lines, his time as a medic exempted. But Tim had been a police officer. A detective, stubborn and stroppy, but ultimately one who cared the most about the case more than the bravado of it. At least not more than any other man who was smaller, in more puppyish proportions, pug nosed and soft eyed in a profession that valued visceral masculinity more along the lines of Lestrade.

He probably remembered clearly everyone he killed. Knew them more than flashes of faces without names that appeared sometimes in the night. It hadn’t really occurred to John to ask how Tim knew Sebastian Moran was Moriarty’s second in command, just figured it was a bit of research and ingenuity. Time had surged forward so much farther for Tim before everything had been yanked out from under him. Of course John had figured Tim was keeping some things close to the vest, but it hadn’t really occurred to him how much. 

Maybe John should feel angry at Tim, for holding so much back. Sherlock would have been (and John really needed to stop using Sherlock as a point of reference). But instead John felt sad and tender, like Tim was a child, so small and defenseless; as if John were capable of taking care of him any more than he was of taking care of himself. To prevent himself from falling into an endless chasm of melancholy he fetched out his phone and checked his messages.

There was a nervous text message from Adair, **Who are you? You’re not my usual contact.**

**Dimmock is slightly indisposed at the moment, but he agreed to the meeting as soon as you’re ready. – W**

**Is he all right? It’s been a couple months. – A**

**We have no intention of interfering with your life any more than is necessary. Also, in the future, perhaps don’t volunteer quite so much information quite so quickly. – W**

**Sorry.**

There was a brief pause, and then an even more nervous text message appeared.

**Wait, why are you telling me to be more careful, are you saying that you were fishing for information? - A**

**Ignore that, obviously if you were fishing for information you wouldn’t tell me. – A**

**There’s no need to be nervous. This isn’t a test. You’ve performed very admirably. – W**

**I’ve been impressed with your work in the field; my only concern is that your talent is going unutilized. When you’re done working with us, you should still have access to a profession worthy of your talents. – W**

**you’re kidding right**

**I’m afraid not Mr. Adair. Your nerves aside, you’re an excellent operative. Your work in Russia was superb and your talent for mathematics is something I would rather see utilized than put to waste. – W**

**Unless you have any personal objections, I would like to place you in the British government protecting an interest of mine. – W**

It was at times like these that John wished texting was more conducive to conversation. And also was a little in awe at his ability to channel his inner Mycroft.

**Whatever you decide, it should be understood that this conversation will not be discussed with anyone. – W**

**If you decide you do not want this new position, it will not be held against you. However I would like for you to consider it. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the position I cannot discuss it with you until you’ve decided. – W**

The next pause continued until their arrival in France made it impractical to check his phone by the minute and he had to give it up in favour of pretending to be a child again. John gently called Tim’s name before he touched his shoulder. There was a soft rippling of elbows and shoulders and waking up stretching beneath his coat before Tim’s face emerged with crease marks but brighter eyes. “All ready then?”

“I followed the framework we decided on. But Adair got a bit nervy, and now I think I may have frightened him off.”

Tim sighed, distracted by tangling with his jacket. “I suppose if you have there’s nothing for it. Are you ready then?”

It took a few deep breaths for John to settle himself. It was just Tim. It would only be a little while, just until they got past the security systems at the station. Paris would be a bit of a bother too, even though they’d be lurking in the outskirts, but it was a necessary evil. And it couldn’t be any worse for John than it was for Tim. 

“Sure, just let me put my coat on,” he was stalling; he knew he was stalling, and Tim knew it too. But Tim wouldn’t call him on it. Not for the first time John was grateful for Tim. His jacket didn’t take long to put it on, nor did his backpack. When he was done it was the same tender, awkward, necessary lift as before. Tim’s hands on his ribs, a reminder of how small his body was now. Then the leather cotton smell of Tim’s coat against his face, the warmth of his body. It was soothing, even though John didn’t know if he should be soothed. He hated this, he hated not knowing; everything had been so clear before.

Tim pressed his face against John’s downy baby hair, still clinging to softness, “Don’t think about it,” Tim whispered fiercely. “It’ll be all right. It won’t be that far.”

Manning up, John hid his face again against the curve of Tim’s neck and pretended as hard as he could that he was a child, that this was fine, and that being carried didn’t put his hair on end. When that was over, when they were past the cameras, there was a man with a cab. John got the feeling he was a bit like Bad Davey, not that he was fighting fast and full of fire, but the vehicle had the feel of one of Davey’s death cabs. A little too real. Like it was trying too hard to be convincing. Simultaneously Tim was both more relaxed and more paranoid. He relaxed next to John on the seat more than John had seen anywhere else except on the roof of Baker Street. The lines that chased the corners of his eyes and bracketed his mouth had relaxed and all of the sudden he looked his age. Well, not his age. He looked too young.

But at the same time, Tim seemed to have acquired a habit of getting between John and anyone else who might want to look at him. It was a little endearing and that it was exactly what John had done while they lived in London, but it was also making John a bit carsick. Gently he elbowed Tim in the side.

“Camera,” Tim said absently.

The cabbie, unaffected by Tim’s desire to keep John from the view of the CCTV, had the markedly relaxed posture of someone trained not to look dangerous.

“Fine,” John subsided. “But once we get on open road, I’d like to look out the window a little. It’s been a while since I’ve been to France, and the last time I was a bit influenced.”

“You do realize this will all be for nothing if they catch us before we even get to Paris. For one thing I’ll lose the first month’s rent on that flat.”

“Can’t have that,” John leaned back in his seat. Whether the cabbie noticed the rhyme or not, he didn’t comment. He didn’t comment all the way to a little block of flats just outside Paris. It was the sort of place built postwar, a little desperate with the last grasping hands of Romanticism pressed to its front steps, its window frames, the inside of its lobby. Red carpeting gone shabby into a pale rose, softly yellow walls gratefully closer to gold then hay fever yellow, and a tall man with ink on his fingers and smudges on the edges of his spectacles who distractedly handed Tim a key without looking up from his newspaper; the sort of place John could never find on his own. Entirely ignoring Tim and John in favor of derogatory murmurs in the direction of whatever he was reading, the bellboy, or doorman or landlord, or whoever he was settled back with a slightly shabby waistcoat and striped socks.

They traversed up a staircase that creaked just on the edge between friendly and alarming up to the third floor where they walked down the questionably lit hallway to their flat. There wasn’t much to recommend it but it was self-sufficient and put on no airs. It was eminently sensible.

“Take something for your back,” John hassled Tim, who dug around the duffel bag to find the tin kettle. It took up space, but it was light and important. Honestly, John couldn’t speak poorly of his priorities. Although John had the feeling it might be a bit of a joke. Tim had been giving him pointed, half amused looks at any time it was mentioned in John’s presence.

“My back is fine.”

“Even as small as I am, you’ve been carrying me around quite a lot.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Tim smiled. “I’m used to the start of arthritis and a knee that was nearly shot out. Carrying you around and still being able to stand up is good for my masculine pride. Check your phone again and see if Adair’s finished his panic attack.”

**You’re him aren’t you? You’re the boss. You’re the one Dimmock said knows everything. – A**

**The rumors of my omniscient have been greatly exaggerated. – W**

That may not been quite the thing, but a little humor was important in negotiations like these. When there was such a difference in perceived power. There was a bit of a pause.

**But you’re the boss? – A**

**Something like that. – W**

**And you really want me to take a job with the British government? – A**

**Something you are well prepared for it. – W** It was best to leave it like that, John thought.

**All right, I’d like to try it. – A**

**Dimmock will call you to schedule a time to meet. Good luck on your new venture. – W**

“What have you been telling people about me?” John said while Tim banged around the kitchen.

“Hmm?” Tim turned enough so John could see his raised eyebrow.

“Adair said you told him I know everything.”

“Hmm,” this time Tim sounded pleased. “Just building the legend.”

John sighed at him, but there was really nothing for it. That’s what W needed to be.

“Oh don’t pout. I’ll tell everyone you’re horrid in the morning,” Tim grinned at him.

John had a few friendly bits of obscenity for that.

**So His Supreme Highness is making calls now? When do I get one? – GN**

**Norton. – D**

**Don’t get all maiden aunt at me dear. - GN**

**Did you bug Adair’s phone? That is incredibly dangerous. – D**

**I wasn’t trying to catch our shadow ruler, I just wanted to keep track of the little wombat. – GN**

**Don’t blame him, I distracted him with a Rubik’s cube. I only knew something was up because suddenly his phone seemed to disappear for short bursts. – GN**

**Now you’re cross, I can feel your disapproval traveling through the air. Go ahead. Talk British at me. <3 – GN**

**No words can express the disapproving frown I am currently frowning at you. - D**

**And you’re my favourite maiden aunt. – GN**


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People have been asking questions since the middle of Small Families about the Holmes' deductions and the conclusions that would come from them. Well here's your chapter, full of faulty observations and incorrect conclusions I have been setting up since the first chapter of Wee Doctor. You might think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. This chapter has been through three iterations, the first was just a long standing bullet list of things needed for the plot of Bantam War and the last two became legible with the assistance of my betas, Caroline and tentacle_love. I'm also over at americanjedi.livejournal.com and thursdayplaid.tumblr.com, I'd love to hear from you at either site. Hope you enjoy! This has certainly been one of my favourite chapters.

Mycroft wasn’t afraid, or in pieces, or any of that tosh really. He was raised in a house where things tended to go wrong, one after the other, spectacularly and regularly in turns. This wasn’t even the worst case scenario. 

Not that he’d ever tell Sherlock, but in some corner of his mind he had been hoping for something like this-W coming for John that was, if only because it would give him more information about the man. It didn’t of course. He had seen what Sherlock had half deliriously referred to as The Crime Scene. There were the small scuffs of John’s little feet and Moran’s after him. There was the obvious trajectory of the two shots; it took barely a moment for Mycroft to calculate the place from whence W had leveled that first shot. Where the earth had borne the weight of his intellect, it seemed like there should be some sort of natural forming plaque. _Here stood the man no one knows._

Moran had been shot once in the chest by a fairly high powered handgun. _Didn’t even bear explaining that this was a bit of a warning shot. Comparatively speaking._ There was anger and possessiveness in it a little, the way W had ripped into Moran, _higher caliber gun, although nothing overly ridiculous. Just enough to make it hurt, to make him wonder if he could survive._

The second shot was delivered at Moran’s shoulder. W had looked into the man’s eyes before he ruined Moran’s face. He had been _angry_ , emotionally involved. _Kept the jaw. Dental records._

The ground was nearly untouched, Mycroft wasn’t as good with leaves and dirt as he was with pupil dilation and the shifting of fingertips. But he could see enough, as well could Sherlock who was cold and pale and broken. Sherlock who ignored the body to kneel and hover his long artist’s fingers over the gouges Dr. Watson’s small feet had made in the dirt.

Without any of his usual grace Sherlock descended on Moran’s body pulling it absolutely apart for clues before stomping off to scream in the trees, at the birds that flew up like black silhouettes against the sky and the skeletal trees seemed to shiver. 

Mycroft would have liked to do the same.

There were no footprints, no tire tracks; there was an impression where their getaway car had been parked so that they could make guesses on its size and make but nothing anywhere close to accurate. No debris, nothing that appeared like foreign mud, no biological samples that were visible.

There was only the idea of W staring down into Moran’s face before he blew the top off of it. Mycroft shivered. This was why he preferred calls to texting, even as he had no choice in accepting W’s requirements for communication. It was much easier to tell if someone was being frigidly, politely disapproving or holding back frigid absolute fury.

Sherlock attacked him, accidently, because he was overwrought. Mycroft knew that, but at the first squeeze of Sherlock’s childish, childish fingers digging nail first into his upper arm, his teeth half bared as he snarled his deductions in a mad breathless rush, Mycroft slapped him hard across the face.

The crack startled birds from the trees in a flutter of cold wings. He felt disconnected from the sound, it seemed so alien.

“I apologize,” he said immediately while Sherlock stared at him. Pale and so childlike. “We can talk about how I’ve always cleaned up your messes, or we can talk about how it was your inability to trust W that put a child into a situation where he was covered in explosives, or we can talk about your inability, what’s always been your inability, to deal with the fact you made a mistake. That, the same way you tried to erase Sebastian and Victor and Father, you passed John off to the one place he didn’t want to go. We even could discuss the fact I made a mistake in choosing this wretched place instead of moving him safely into my residence. Or we could go speak to the headmaster.”

Sherlock bit his lip, looking angry but unable to argue. “Boring, I already know the answer; blackmail. Moriarty had something on the headmaster; he capitalized on that to put in place an intelligence agent, military background, experienced with a sniper rifle. I’ve changed my mind,” he suddenly turned his head to look at Mycroft. “I would like to question him after all.”

There were several matters to consider concerning the school. First, the headmaster. Blackmailed by Moriarty so that a professor by the name of Sebastian Moran could be placed in the school. Mycroft had been aware, not of the blackmail, but of Moran; military experience, gap year in India with some sort of tiger conservation endeavor. _Unusual, but not entirely strange for an intelligent young man._ Author, also, of the sort of combination history and sociology nonfiction that were all the rage in the past decade. A perfectly qualified history teacher who had not superficially raised any red flags. Not until his body was discovered on a narrow footpath.

Unfortunately Sherlock needed to be sedated shortly after entering the headmaster’s office. And for the next three days.

It was not what anyone would prefer, but Sherlock had gone so manic, was so absolutely furious that Mycroft was sincerely concerned he would kill someone. Namely the headmaster. Mycroft himself would have enjoyed the same, a break from the white hot fury and self-recrimination. It would have been convenient if he had not been raised to be so quiet, precise, to step as gently through the halls of his home as if it were made of eggshells. It helped to shape his face into something nearly impenetrable, but at a time he would have benefited from being able to scream, or break something, or knock someone over, he couldn’t quite make himself.

Mycroft made the most of his time, pouring over his compiled evidence labeled just on the edge of misfile. He could readily believe there was a mole; there had been pressure from vague sources, questions with too many shades of meaning, pressure on his staff. He had been forced to hide everything away and produce a spur of the moment construction based on intel W had given him. That there was someone who knew about his little flight of the dead and that he was subtly trying to fish them out. He had presented this whole mess in the vague euphemistic way that only the extremely rich or the extremely poor seemed to have completely mastered, listed it as a family emergency and let his staff overhear some misleading information while he pretended to talk into his phone.

But now there was a break, he was in a room that wasn’t bugged, and he had a chance to process the information. Listening to the recording from the phone, the sound of gunfire and John’s voice repeating _just like me,_ as if his nature were excuse enough to be killed. It made Mycroft sad, and wary, but didn’t give him any new information that he hadn’t already guessed. Then the name _Tim_ spoken with an edge of military command but tinged with sudden relief, something trusting.

 _One of Grendel’s men attacked._ There was one mystery solved, one that could draw him into W. The person, or organization, that was trying to retrieve John went by the name of Grendel. He would have to see how discreetly he could look for the name. After that a surprised _Davey?_. Someone he knew but wasn’t expecting. And who was Tim? John was noticeably fond of Sherlock, but almost in the way a child would be fond of a charming younger friend; a mixture of pride, pleasure and protectiveness. Tim seemed to be the person he called when he didn’t know what to do. When he was frightened, but trying not to show it.

So there was support staff; John wasn’t as alone as he appeared. Mycroft wished he could hear what was going on the other end of John’s phone. And when did he get it, had John had it even while Mycroft was questioning him at the restaurant? It was clear as soon as John had called and then immediately hung up. An absolutely secure phone system would only be able to function if the mobiles couldn’t even be traced by each other. Tim, whoever he might be, the salve to John’s panic, needed John to call a number with the tablet so that he could triangulate John’s position. Which meant Tim had been at the wreck of the car, had moved around the space without disturbing any evidence and since there was no mystery phone lying around had retrieved that as well before it could be examined. Whoever Tim was, John trusted him completely. 

And that one parting line that flowed as easily, and well-practiced as breathing from John’s mouth.

_Love you too._

As if John’s love was something already earned, expected. Something a stranger wore as comfortably as an old worn coat. Mycroft didn’t think he should let Sherlock hear the recording.

But Tim. Familiar, safe, loved Tim could help to solve the mystery of just who W was. Mycroft poured over the rest of the evidence beside Sherlock’s bedside, going over calculations and tracing the shapes of conversations. The mystery of W was monolithic, but Mycroft felt he was now able to wrestle a little with a corner of perspective.

Once Sherlock was back on his feet, cold and trembling, Mycroft showed him John’s little beige room. The only sign that anyone had lived in the space in the last month was the careful stack of due assignments on the desk. There was no Grey’s, no sentimental plaid blanket, nothing hanging on the walls, no pictures, no box of biscuits on the dresser. Sherlock stood trembling in the middle of the room. “They took everything, all of it.”

“I imagine that was Moriarty’s idea.”

“Are you finished punishing me?” Sherlock’s caesious eyes still upon Mycroft’s face.

“Neither of us knew of W and yet he contacted us, what do you think that means?”

Sherlock swallowed. How poetic he looked, all argent and sable. The breath that had trundled like a dying man’s began to speed up. “That he thinks we’re clever, useful.”

“But he doesn’t think we could figure him out. Even with our immense brains his anonymity would be protected,” Mycroft finished the thought.

“We don’t know about sentiment. Or manners.”

“Or mercy,” Mycroft swallowed. “Or fathers.” 

“We know plenty about fathers,” Sherlock dismissed.

“We know plenty about _our_ father,” Mycroft highlighted his point with the tip of his umbrella against the floor. “About how to be cool and bored and unable to connect with anything or anyone. So I became mother and you became one giant _scream_ running through the house like the very air burnt you.”

“It did,” Sherlock panted, clutching at the scarf around his neck, eyelids fluttering. The square window above the desk had been industriously scrubbed from the inside, but the build of up dust and age still cast the room into a strange beige light. It vaguely made Mycroft nauseous, and not just the mental image of John industriously scrubbing at the window panes in an effort to brighten the room. “I need to get out of here,” Sherlock made a vague motion with his hands lifting to tighten in his hair. “This room, it just keeps _buzzing._ Its _agonizing.”_

“The dark side of sentiment. Empathy. It’ll be better once we get John back.”

Sherlock fled out of the little prison cell behind Mycroft. He wondered if his little brother knew how close he was sticking. He continued in silence all the way to Mycroft’s mobile office which looked altogether like someone had transplanted some post war study in blue. The room looked incredibly expensive in a way that couldn’t be faked. Everything sleekly beautiful and weighted; and helpfully the white boards had been delivered. 

“White boards? Really Mycroft?”

“Well I could pin a collage and bit of string up on the wall, but I’m renting it through an umbrella corporation and damaging this wallpaper would probably require more renegotiating than I’d like.” They looked at the wallpaper. It did look expensive. 

“Shall we begin?”

“From the beginning,” Sherlock agreed with gritted teeth.

***

Much later, sometime after a hunched old waiter came to leave a tea tray and carry out the ignored lunch tray, Mycroft and Sherlock leaned back to stare at their circular observations; the sparse hints of W they had been able to gather up, too neatly revealed and obscured to be anything but masterful knots designed to defy expectation.

“Our assumptions about W don’t fit, we’re missing something. Data. We’re looking at this from the wrong angle,” Sherlock had smudges of dry erase marker along his wrists and against his cheeks from where he had paused to pull at his hair.

“We could work from the assumption that W couldn’t keep John safe,” Mycroft pinched at the bridge of his nose.

“But _that_ doesn’t make any sense either.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense; if he’s really so powerful why not keep him close? But he didn’t.”

“So he left him alone all that time. He was living on the street, all alone. He fell into the clutches of a street king of all things, if you could call him that. The self-important blowhard. It was difficult to find food, the conditions were dangerous I know you think I’m oblivious, but I _do realize_ that detective work is dangerous as well, but he was allowed to live with me, to go on adventures. Then the bomb, if we had been at home John could have been injured. Never mind the game,” Sherlock was pacing back and forth, it was beginning to give Mycroft the creeping shades of a tremendous migraine. “But all those actions are contrary to John’s conceptualization of what a proper family should be. But there was no one there for him, and he didn’t act like there was anything peculiar about it.”

Mycroft’s face twitched. 

Sherlock went still.

“You know something,” Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know?”

“There was a recording of a call that John made before Moriarty abducted him. Because of circumstances I was only able to listen to that a few days ago. And I had some tests done on John in the hospital.”

“How could you? You know I have the prerogative on experimentation.”

It was good to see Sherlock’s moral character hadn’t been too damaged by this whole difficulty. 

“You were too busy having an emotional meltdown.”

Sherlock scowled, “I demand the data.”

“It’s too difficult to access at this time,” Mycroft hedged thinking of the quick, comfortable, _love you too._ “But suffice to say, from the scans I was able to glean the information that John’s mental development may have been unnaturally accelerated which may or may not have something to do with W’s brilliance.”

“You always have to keep everything so close to your chest; you have to be the only one who knows everything. I may have failed John, but I have to right at least to try and make it right.”

“It’s more than that,” Mycroft scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’ve been protecting the situation, you, John, everything to do with it, from my superiors. Even from my fellows in the government. I’ve been told I have a mole in my organization, but how far this stretches I have no idea. I have no idea who’s looking for John. I have no idea what they’d do to you. I could be merrily sitting in a nest of asps. Everything I’ve done in an effort to resolve the situation I have done _just_ on the border of illegal. But there was a boy, approximately fifteen. He was the one who stopped the secure vehicle I provided for John,” 

Mycroft looked tense in a way that he knew Sherlock rarely had the opportunity to see. This was the side of himself that wasn’t just cool, sleek, and dressed in all the familiar power of something like Christmas, serial and inescapable; this was the part of himself he tried to keep from his brother. The part with edges and roughness and force behind him and stress on his shoulders. The thousand apocalypses turned aside by a hair’s breadth. 

“Like John he had incredibly advanced mental development, although he was quite completely mad. He had experience with military weaponry and strategy; at least enough so that he was able to fool whatever driver was selected at random for the assignment. A security measure. He was also screaming that if he retrieved John he would be allowed to go home.”

Sherlock’s face was quite pale.

Mycroft continued somewhat awkwardly, on anyone else his expression would have still held the victor’s weight in confidence. On Mycroft it was like the careful tenseness of an uncertain man. “Whoever John was hiding from found him. I’m not altogether certain why they didn’t make a second try to take him. Something stopped them; ironically it may have been Moriarty picking him up after the first agent had been neutralized. John said he was _Grendel’s man,_ and while a man he certainly was not, I’m sure you understand what he means.”

“I’ve never heard him mention Grendel, an organization or a person, do you know?”

He shook his head, “Either way by analysis it was discovered that genetically this mad young man was very similar to a brilliant mathematician. Now, with that information, what might I assume about John?”

Pale throat working to swallow, Sherlock leaned back against a pale blue armchair.

But that honestly didn’t seem to help, and did Sherlock have to tear himself asunder over every little thing? This was the worst time for him to suddenly discover sentiment. He always did get caught up in the whirlwind of things. Mycroft walked up to the whiteboard, made a clean space and wrote in perfect rounded script:

1\. Street – starvation, physical danger, ‘Bad Davey’  
2\. Detective Work   
3\. First Bomb  
4\. Andrew West’s House  
5\. The Pool  
6\. Attempted Kidnapping

Mycroft rolled his eyes at Sherlock’s face, “They’re all proper titles. Regrettably my man’s phone could only record half of the conversation. But two names were mentioned, Tim, who John seemed very comfortable speaking to, and Davey. I’m assuming that’s Bad Davey. And here,” he pointed to number six, “We know that W was here. He shot a man in the head and drove away in a car with John. He also gave John one of his untraceable mobiles.” He made note of it to the side. Terrible as it was to contemplate, he wasn’t quite sure what to do next. “So, he does take some interest in John’s safety. Interesting that he was able to come on the precise night that Moriarty was planning on kidnapping John.”

“We’ve already established W is aware of Moriarty’s movements.”

“So, John wasn’t left as alone as we thought. Three,” Sherlock pointed, jumping back on track. “We were invited to Lestrade’s house. He had planned to keep us longer, but we left because it was dull.”

Something stirred in the back of Mycroft’s mind, bruises on the DI’s wrists. He wrote next to five, _Lestrade arrived with convenient timing. Captured most snipers._

“Lestrade’s clean, isn’t he?”

“I’d know if he wasn’t,” Mycroft said absently. “He can’t hide anything of note. Except from himself.”

“What’s his-?” his brother seemed to need a moment, face scrunching up, “whatever name is left over?”

“Gregory, although he prefers Greg amongst his friends.”

“Really, since I’ve known him?”

Rolling his eyes, Mycroft turned back to the board, “Since his birth, you really must stop deleting people’s names. Either way, his involvement if any is indirect.”

“Hmm,” Sherlock agreed. “But still, that’s two out of six. He’d also be involved in the second one. Most cases begin and end at the Yard.” Lestrade’s name went next to number two as well. “So maybe not Lestrade, but someone with his ear.” 

He moved as if to head for the door, but Mycroft stopped him, “We’re not leaving this half done. Lestrade had nothing to do with the first, fourth and sixth. John obviously didn’t starve, or fall into the grip of any malfeasant.” 

“Other than Bad Davey,” Sherlock groused. It was a ridiculous name to be sure, but not one that should necessarily cause such immediate loathing. “I don’t know why he was on the phone with John.”

Mycroft leaned back on one heel. The small time street king was nothing much. A few dealers under his belt, a little part on extortion. The most exciting thing he did was get a few local gangs to pay rent to him by being legendary in his capacity for violence. He was a criminal thoroughly uninspiring other than his unbiased vicious streak. There wasn’t much point in going any deeper. “I’m surprised John wanted anything to do with him. He’s very… moral. He doesn’t seem to hold to cruelty much.”

“Davey was pushy with John more than anything. Almost every time I met with him he was trying to… _own_ John. He kept offering him money, bullets, medicine. And he was always calling John these names, like he was a pet. _Precious little dear_ memorably, _sweetheart._ And _Johnny._ No one else called him Johnny but Rooster. They argued about the detective work, that it was too dangerous. Mycroft, what’s wrong with your face?”

Mycroft felt something large and sick in his belly that he pushed away. He erased Bad Davey (he couldn’t believe he was calling him that ridiculous name in his head) from the danger part of the board and after quickly gridding out the board in his mind settled on a clear section where he could write a decent sized column. _Bad Davey,_ he wrote, and underneath, _big brother,_ underlining both words. Mycroft pulled his phone out of his pocket and called Anthea, “I want information on the rise and fall of every gang in London over the last seven years.”

“Yes sir,” she said mildly

“What are you doing?”

“John obviously didn’t starve,” he said pointing to the 1. “Why not? And he was safe. Why that too?”

“He said he was with Bailey’s Crew and they shared food. And he got money from Bad Davey for being his personal medic; he said that the street children paid him too…”

“How much money do you honestly think John accepted from street children? He has a difficult time accepting adults aren’t his personal responsibility. He likely did that work out of the goodness of his heart,” Mycroft finished. “So money for food, understandable as John became fast friends with Davey’s younger brother. Very, very fast friends wouldn’t you say?”

“John said he knew him for a long time,” Sherlock sounded slightly dazed.

After writing **money** under Bad Davey’s name, Mycroft pointed to 2, “Where was he here?” 

“He didn’t…” Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “On that smuggling case where the gang sent that government worker ears. He offered me a significant amount of cocaine to never see John again.”

“He wasn’t planning on following through,” Mycroft already knew.

“He said he didn’t.”

Mycroft wrote **test associates**. “And I suppose that Davey could use his criminal connections to keep watch on John.”

“He’d have to be much better than he’s pretending,” Sherlock said, going very still. “He’d have to devote his whole day to it practically.”

3 was easy, “Davey was there, outside the flat, insisted John come with him. I- I almost didn’t recognize him at first.”

And then four, “Joe Harrison was in trouble because of drugs,” Sherlock said faintly. “This doesn’t mean anything.”

“I do realize you hate this man, but in your opinion, do you think it’s possible for Davey to be smart. As smart as us, smart like John is?”

This took a long pause, tense features and a moment to get over an instinctive reaction. “He could be,” Sherlock said tightly. “But he’s not like John. Not at all. And it would be impossible anyway, John-” But it was occurring to Sherlock.

“Not like someone trained from a young age in a mercenary force of child soldiers?”

“Bad Davey has said several times in my company that Rooster is his brother. And Rooster is fourteen. And mad.”

“Well,” Mycroft said. “That’s certainly supports the hypothesis.”

“I think now is a good time to return to London.”

Mycroft smiled, feline and predatory, “I think that’s an excellent idea.”

 

 

**Need assistance immediately. Return to London, trapped at caterer’s discussing cake. – BD**

**Sounds horrible. Stay strong. - W**

**What’s the difference between butterscotch and buttercream icing? – BD**

**A heart attack? -W**

**Update, Tim said get neither. You’ll kill everyone. – W**

**Those are horrible options. This is a wedding, not a birthday party. Upgrade your caterer. – T**

**Tim said he’ll send you the number for a great wedding cake maker. – W**

**You have my eternal gratitude. I was about to slit his throat anyway. - BD  
**


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betas are Caroline and tentacle_love, my livejournal is americanjedi.livejournal.com and my tumblr is thursdayplaid.tumblr.com. I'm thinking of publishing the Wee Doctor series as an original series. Leave a message in either place, or in the comments about if you'd purchase said series, and if so paper or ebook. And now my battery's dying... GOODBYE~~~

The interview with Bad Davey went alarmingly. 

On the drive back to London Mycroft looked at death, disappearance, allied gangs suddenly ripping each other apart. A river ran subterranean, its currents flowing out until its tide effected the ebb and flow of cocaine in Edinburgh and match fixing in Manchester and the subtle roll of smuggling at England’s coast. There was more, little trickles in London offering famine or flood to every country that tried to touch corruption in seat of England empire.

And everywhere the bored scrawl of the constabulary half mentioning some scrawny ginger kid who wore the face of victim, witness, two bit crook, no one important, no one worth naming. The government files would be even less helpful, he was sure, and would raise many more flags, so he left things there and closed his eyes to try and calculate. He knew Bad Davey (that was such a ridiculous name, he could see the point in it, but still) had his fingers in more, or perhaps less. It was done, all those assassinations, all that brutality with grace and practicality, a razor against the dark underbelly of London. Was W raising his son up as a trap for the nearly heartless, drawing in wounded hearts with that perversely self-sufficient brokenness and the other a whisper in the dark and the flash of barbarity?

It was clear this was no sadistic compulsion, or self- devouring tumble of a mind like Moriarty seemed burdened with. Bad Davey didn’t slip a noose around the necks of the criminal class because he enjoyed it. He was up to something. Luckily John had led Sherlock into what that irrepressible philosopher in him named Davey’s pretentious lair. They were dropped off in front of a block of flats, like any number of other blocks of flats. The difference being of course that almost everyone in the lobby seemed to be armed. It became clearer to Mycroft than it had been previously that it was possible the two of them could be seriously injured in an effort to extract themselves from the situation they had found themselves in.

No sooner had Sherlock opened his mouth to demand Bad Davey’s presence than the man appeared looking far more civilised than he had been expecting. His hair carefully smoothed down to a dull shine. His eyes disappearing behind the reflection off his gold rimmed glasses. Before Mycroft could process much more than the six florists the man had probably been to that morning, that he had led a woman by the arm for much of the day and the faint scent of vanilla cake, Bad Davey had Sherlock by the muffler. They had managed to half stumble into the gold toned sitting room of a bottom floor flat when the man produced a short, curved knife from somewhere on his person in a ridiculous bit of sleight of hand and threw it. It sliced off a dark twist of hair from Sherlock’s head as he ducked.

Mycroft suddenly became aware of a million things; dust motes tinted the colour of old book pages, the shift of his well soled shoes against the Berber carpeting, the smell of sawdust (rodent, too large for a mouse, too small for a rabbit, unless a miniature variety; kept clean, the pet of a lonely single middle aged man), the hypnotically paisley sofa, the two rings on the coffee table (an accident, the flat renter had been excited about the company, but forgot to put down coaster) the slow cooker in the corner (near a carefully used vegetarian cookbook and a gluten free cookbook with a well broken spine: food allergy) until it was much too much and not at all useful. But of course by the time Mycroft could lurch forward to be of use Davey had Sherlock by the curls. Mycroft was sincerely concerned Bad Davey was going to attempt to rip out Sherlock’s throat with his teeth. There was nothing for it but to leap on Bad Davey’s back and attempt a choke hold. Davey went tense and loose in strange ways and simply slipped out of Mycroft’s grip, ducking and rolling across the tan Berber as swift as blood splatter before crouching, teeth barely hidden behind his lips. This was, of course, why Mycroft hated legwork. 

Mind games were simple, false starts, bluffs; but when it was a matter of muscle and bone the victor could fall stumbling into the arms of chance. Or simply be supernaturally good at getting out of choke holds. He hadn’t been entirely sure what to expect from Bad Davey, but it wasn’t this. He looked vaguely scholarly, smoothed down and nearly childlike in the sleekness of his features the color of white china, his gold rimmed glasses gone slightly askew. His hair, tangling between orange and burgundy was starting to spring up where before it had been carefully tamed down, into a sort of natural pompadour, his neat brown suit cut in careful nonthreatening lines to hide the razor, whipcord sharpness of him. But his face, it was dark streets, razor wire, urban bred foxes huge and snarling bare toothed and driving it all an intellect like a cornered animal twisting and hungry, burning like a comet in the dark. 

Mycroft dodged back as Davey sprung forward, produced a second flat knife from under his lapel. Sherlock went for his legs as Mycroft valiantly wrapped his hand around Davey’s wrist. Davey leapt and twisted and snarled, but Sherlock had gone a bit mad on the matter of John and was fighting filthy for a scrap of information.

“What?” Davey asked, panting. _“Now_ you love the little darling?”

Sherlock widened his eyes and snapped his elbow into Davey’s gut. “You know where he is, _tell me.”_

Seeing that they were capable of killing each other, Mycroft intervened at substantial personal risk. “Before you two slit each other’s throats can we attempt something like a dignified discussion?”

“No!” Sherlock and Davey shouted at the same time. Sherlock was sporting alarming scratches across his throat. Retreating again Mycroft calculated degree of attack and kneed Davey hard in the kidney. He hissed and yowled, his grip slipping enough so that Mycroft could draw him back into his arms.

“I know. I know. That poor child; drives you mad, doesn’t he? Can’t just sit still and do what’s best for himself. No, he must have _adventures_ , he must go frolicking across the whole of London like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Like nothing can stop him. But you know don’t you? You’ve seen what’s in the dark underbelly. You know what people will do to brilliant, prefect, exceptional minds. And then, of course, he gets a friend to facilitate him.” Mycroft spoke quickly, taking advantage of his height advantage, Davey had snarled and sunk his nails into the backs of Mycroft’s hands but hadn’t put up anymore resistance than that. 

“We know you’re like John,” Mycroft said quickly and felt the tension shake in Davey’s spine where he held him against his breastbone. “That you know W.” 

Davey’s head snapped to try and look at him while he spoke and there was something terrifying about him, even in profile. Terrifying and familiar. He released Davey to take a half step back before he could stop himself.

“W gave me John,” Sherlock said, suddenly sounding so much like a child.

“Which is why I should _slaughter you,”_ Davey lurched forward to drive Sherlock to the ground with a flash and fluster of cloth.

“Believe me; I can fully comprehend the rage one feels at the threat to a baby sibling,” Mycroft spoke quickly. “But surely Sherlock, and his inability to process positive emotional attachments, is not the enemy As charming as the display of your ire is, there are more pressing issues. Someone identified as Grendel sent someone, a fourteen year old with high grade weaponry to capture John. He was mad, which I can assure you I don’t mean in the simple vernacular. And he was convinced that if he captured John he would be allowed to go home.

“You’re aware of this of course because he called you. Well, John called someone by the name of _Tim_ with whom you were keeping company. Now, at this point it is less of a concern whether Tim is W, or if W is someone else. But Grendel earnestly wants both John and W extinguished and W is slipping, or at least trying to make it look as if he is. Either way-”

“You added seven years between generations and you got Roost, and then me,” there was a shuttered look to Davey’s face, he was calculating something. Some things. He leaned forward, the fight in him seemed to have calmed, even as his hand settled absently on Sherlock neck. Mycroft tried very hard not to let his breath stop in his own throat.

“Sherlock, stay still,” he ordered him quickly. Orders usually didn’t work with Sherlock, but this time he relaxed back, baring his teeth.

“What do you want from me then?” Davey tilted his head. “Names? Locations? Horrors?”

“John,” Sherlock sounded so adult just then. Mycroft was almost proud of him.

Davey smoothed Sherlock’s hair back and Sherlock punched him in the belly so he let loose a wet hacking cough. “Oh,” Mycroft could hear the grin clearly in his voice, “that was clever. You’ll give me a second. Effective shot, but still, I could’ve puked all over you.”

“What do I do to get John back?” Sherlock pressed.

“Grow a pair and admit you love him,” Davey said after a short pause where the _you idiot_ went just barely unspoken. “If you’re not able to appreciate that he cares about you enough to put up with your sullen self-centered attitude than why bother trying to get him back at all?”

Bad Davey had folded his hands politely in his lap; he didn’t need a hand at Sherlock’s throat anymore.

“But he’s alright?” Sherlock’s eyes were closed. It made Mycroft’s stomach relax.

“He’s not in any physical danger,” Davey replied in a way that was meant to cut. Was obviously meant to cut. Made no apologies about cutting.

“That’s not your usual style.”

“You did some maths, put it together that Johnny is my overly noble, self-sacrificing baby brother and you didn’t think I’d try to do you a little injury?” He’s not really paying attention to them, underneath there’s the rush of a war room.

He and Sherlock share a look of pure dislike.

“Off the floor then and away,” Davey proclaimed, standing and resettling his brown suit into passive lines. “I’m tired of looking at your face.” Scowling, Sherlock lurched up, looking at Mycroft for a moment before half stumbling to the door. Right shoulder looked a bit wrenched, and Sherlock’s gait was off at well; it took only a moment of analysis for Mycroft to see for all Davey’s snarlings he wasn’t legitimately trying to do serious injury to Sherlock. Only inconvenience him, make it difficult to take broad steps, to run, to use his dominant hand. 

When Sherlock was out the door, muttering obscure and pointed insults, Mycroft turned to consider Davey. “You’re really that fond of John?”

Bad Davey’s eyes set and catch on him, it feels very much like something Mycroft should be afraid of.

“Hmm. Yes. I’m terribly fond,” he leaned back against the sofa, rolling his head slowly so it popped gently before slowly looking at Mycroft again. “He just makes you want him to be so proud of you, doesn’t he?”

“You’ll end up disappointing him,” Mycroft was more settled now he was on familiar, well-paced ground. He was so much better at mind games. Those were easy, there were handholds and acres of behavior to trace, “Just like I will.”

“We just keep on for the sake of the children, don’t we?” his smile was low and amused, voice nearly sibilant. “Taking each word he spares us…”

“We’re not talking about John anymore are we?”

“Aren’t we?” his smile was as sharp and neat as a fox’s, “Who else do I know of interest?” Davey leaned back against the paisley sofa. It made Mycroft feel slightly seasick.

“You’ve actually met W. In person.”

Davey stared at him. It gave Mycroft the feeling of being the butt of a cosmic joke, or being poised at the cusp of the sort of Grecian tragedy that made the reader wince. Either option seemed the sort to amuse the smirking kingpin. Davey’s feet shifted quick as he slipped neatly out the door before Mycroft could catch hold of him and he disappeared around a corner before Mycroft could follow after him.

Mycroft was getting tired of dodgy Watsons.

 

When he finds Sherlock again it is not at Scotland Yard where they agreed they would go next, he is at St Bart’s with a flustered and nearly frantic Molly Hooper questioning her rapid fire.

“Sherlock!” he said, pretending he wasn’t out of breath.

His brother turned, one of Dr. Hooper’s small hands nearly swallowed in his large, long fingered grip. Face shuttering, going eerily still and then reforming into something trying too hard to be cheery Sherlock turned back to Dr. Hooper and took a deep breath.

“Molly,” there was enough artifice in Sherlock’s voice that even Dr. Hooper seemed to notice, peering at him as one would a suddenly rabid animal. “Will you please tell my brother what you just told me?”

“W-Which part?”

“The part with John Watson,” Sherlock repeated with deliberate slowness.

“Um, he came to see me every once in a while. His mum was sick, d-didn’t say what she had. His dad was upset about it, of course he was upset about it, I mean.”

Suddenly Mycroft was quite still, his heart pattering in time with his calculations. “Sherlock, you’re alarming her,” he gently took her hand from Sherlock and led her to sit at one of the tall stools. “I apologise Dr. Hooper. John is a friend of the family, and we’ve lost contact with him. We believe his father might be in trouble.”

“Criminal trouble?” her narrow fingers rested against her lips as she turned her head to give a scolding look to Sherlock. “Why didn’t you say something? John is such a sweetheart. I’ll try to help anyway I can.”

Mycroft pulled it from her, piece by piece: _tired, doesn’t get enough sleep, likes to talk with John, can’t cook, never shouts at John when he’s angry, tries to keep them together as a family._

_That John’s father has to leave him sometimes and it frightens John who doesn’t like to be alone. Who worries about his father._

Sherlock is very still when she said that, serious. Finally past the phrenic stage and onto something still and thoughtful.

“I told him I was sure his father didn’t want to go. That he wanted to stay with John. Is someone after them?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said, voice solemn and still. “John was to stay with me, to try and keep him safe. John’s father trusted me, but with this Moriarty problem-” his smile was small and tight. “Thank you for your help. You’ve been more assistance than you know. Mycroft and I need to go now, but if John or his father contacts you, please let me know.”

“Yes, of course,” she said earnestly, ponytail bobbing. The smile she received in reply was almost sweet. “Oh, no,” her hands suddenly flew to her mouth again. “Jim asked some questions about John, just in passing, was he the one who…?”

“No,” Sherlock made a soft curl of a smile that was oddly reminiscent of Dr. Watson. “Of course not Molly. Don’t worry on that account. You’ll run the sample I gave you?”

She blinked a little of the worry out of her eyes and nodded absently.

Mycroft’s mind was busy sorting, parsing, categorizing the intricacies of Dr. Hooper’s body language while he bid her goodbye and slipped out the door after his brother. “How much of that was made up on John’s part? Obviously the part about the sick mother.”

“He was so hungry for female attention he would have lived here if there was anything like a mother figure in residence.”

“But he’s a horrible liar, especially when it comes to emotional matters, his heart is too transparent,” Sherlock’s gaze was far away.

“So someone close to him did recently lose a wife. Perhaps W did before he retrieved John. There was something W texted me, _why do you think I haven’t been in contact?_ ”

“He’s been trying to stay close. What am I doing Mycroft?” Sherlock’s hands tensed into knots. “What was I thinking? John could have died because of me. He could have ended up with Moriarty, which would have been worse for him.”

“So you’re giving up? The great mystery of W, the greatest mystery of our time? A mind like that-”

Sherlock jerked away from him, still limping a little from Davey’s earlier ministrations.

“I’m not an idiot. You want to go home and take drugs. Overdose just enough so you don’t have to think for a few days.”

“He was lonely,” he said softly in reply. There was an incredible anger beneath his words, like spring covered in a heavy snowfall.

“Everyone’s lonely, welcome to the modern age,” Mycroft was starting to feel a little alarmed, although everything was still in its proper parameters.

“Not like this,” he spoke carefully, as if his epiphany were made of spun glass. “There’s something different in us, something that might be wrong. Don’t you feel it?”

Mycroft looked seriously at his brother for a moment and sighed. “Sometimes. But we’re still going to the Yard.”

“Are we going to solve the mystery?” he laughed. “Save W, will he show his gratitude by revealing his great genius? Will we save him from Grendel? The man who can waltz around invisibly?”

“It’s better than listening to you whinge on in self-pity,” Mycroft snapped, full tired of it. “Of course, not having to pause to explain my observations of you will speed things along.”

“You’re not smarter than me!” Sherlock snapped at Mycroft’s back.

“Keep telling yourself that,” Mycroft smirked, listening to the sound of Sherlock half running to catch him before he got to the elevator.

 

**Mr. Norton, I hear you’d like to talk. – W**

**You’re real then? I was starting to think you were dear old Tim imaginary friend. – GN**


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betas are Caroline and tentacle_love, my livejournal is americanjedi.livejournal.com and my tumblr is thursdayplaid.tumblr.com. I'm thinking of publishing the Wee Doctor series as an original series. Leave a message in either place, or in the comments about if you'd purchase said series, and if so paper or ebook.

There were 20 Arrondissements in Paris, not counting the Ile at the heart of the City where there were flocks of CCTV cameras artistically tucked into the architecture. Paris had its own gangs, international and domestic, its own network of beggars, bagmen and burglars. John didn’t have connections here and things were as dangerous as ever for both Tim and him, so on the whole they stuck to the outskirts of the city and paid for things with old unexciting cash that Norton laundered for them. 

Tim fretted through it, tense faced until John bullied him out of it. He acquired an old reliable rifle and took to cleaning it aggressively when he wanted to drink. For his part John acted like he hadn’t made the connection. 

Tim had tracked Grendel back and forth, chasing cold trails and tiny threads across Europe and Asia until they had all ended up pointing to France, that there was something burning unnaturally in the city of light. At least that was how the latest picked up in the broad sweep of international police forces Tim had made. A witness who described a strange burning light like something out of a movie. The witness had been homeless and struggling with addiction, so no one thought it strange they ended up stabbed on the streets of Paris shortly after they made the report. It was a miracle the report was made at all.

Tim and John knew what it meant, someone had infiltrated the Parisian police force, there was someone watching. But it had been enough time they were bold enough to try and seize the gun.

Time enough had also passed that when John had received that first text from Sherlock instead of rushing to open it he immediately opened his bedside drawer, dropped his phone inside and slammed the drawer closed. They had picked up their furniture, and most of their linens, at an out of the way second hand store in the middle of the country. John’s duvet smelled faintly of liniment cream and sunshine and their sofa smelled vaguely of ferret. But it was cheap and the shop owner only kept paper accounts. 

“What are you doing in there?” Tim called from the other side of the thin wall that divided their bedrooms.

“Nothing!” John shouted and went to make tea.

Tim, haven’t officially given up pretending he was asleep shifted on his bed. John heard the squeak of the springs and tried to find less creaky floorboards to walk across. “Don’t make tea. It’s three in the morning.”

“You’re up.”

“Madame Durant and her six month old baby aren’t yet, by some miracle. And if she gets any less sleep she’s going to become a security risk.” Their trusty kettle had decided to take umbrage at the move and shriek loud enough to shake the narrow walls of the flat.

John sighed and went to lie on the ferret couch in one of the pale panes of late moonlight cast through their living room windows. The nights were still long and so the light was tinted cool, soft, for all its geometry. He could hear lories puttering slowly past outside, he listened to them quietly pretending he wasn’t totally in denial. That he wasn’t in so much panicked anxiety that his nerves had turned electric under his skin and he was hovering right below a total quivering mess. He lay his hand half in the light and half in the shadow and concentrated on keeping his hand still, as if that might be the most important thing in the world. After a few minutes Tim came out as well, the scent of gun oil clinging to him, to open the cupboards until he found a small saucepan to fill with water. The water pipes made soft, burbling waking sounds in response. The faint sort of sound one could only hear when one was trying to press every inch of focus outside instead of in.

When John propped himself up on one elbow and looked at Tim, his straight hair was still vaguely ginger, so was John’s hair, his neat tartan pajama bottoms resting gently over the top of his feet. Except for the deep creases around the knees they looked as obsessive straightened and wrinkle proof as Tim’s spine. Tim’s skin lost a lot of its ruddiness in the moonlight, but the small constellation of scars dragged in a swath under Tim’s arm where the skin was soft and vulnerable made John clench his fist in the cushion of the sofa. That was from Grendel, when he tried to get Tim to tell where John was. Grendel hadn’t done most of it apparently; he lacked the control to be sure the interrogation didn’t simply turn into a creative execution. But he had watched. And he had ordered it. 

“You need to contact Godfrey soon,” Tim said, pulling out two mugs from the cabinets, and two different boxes of tea. John had been consigned to peppermint, with the boxes on the top shelf until he was in control of his slightly psychosomatic caffeine cravings again. “He’s too canny. He’s not going to keep working with us until he hears from you.”

“Fine.”

Tim looked up from the stovetop and narrowed his eyes at John, it made John’s back to military straight and his face go expressively mulish. “What is it?”

It wasn’t anything John wanted to talk about yet, he still felt awkward and anxious about it. Despite the experience of these last months where his already limited height have been demolished along with his wife by Grendel’s mad science experiment, John was still a captain in her Majesty’s Royal Army Medical Corps. He was a grown man, and he had no desire to tell his supplementary sibling of circumstance that he was scared to read a text message.

“Wasn’t a nightmare, you’re not nearly tense enough.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

Tim made his pug face at John, John was unmoved. “Fine. You’ll let me know if there’s an issue.”

“I always do,” John climbed off the ferret sofa to tread on sock feet into the kitchen to open the ice box and contemplate if he felt like making eggs.

“So you’ll text Godfrey today?” Tim squeezed past him to grab the pastry bag on top of the ice box. Tim ate the worst food, but he was active enough and John wrote his case enough for the drinking that he didn’t think he had a right to say anything about Tim’s penchant for butter and chocolate. He supposed that if he had been in his fifties and suddenly found himself young again he’d be eating all the junk food he could get his hands on too. 

“Yes of course,” John decided against eggs and went for the toaster. “I’d like to try to find whoever’s been helping Grendel.”

“I don’t think Grendel has an assistant, not in the way you mean. He’s too paranoid,” Tim was focused on the bag; they’d had this conversation before.

“There has to be someone, a caretaker, someone to help him.”

Tim continued to look unconvinced.

“Look, one thing I’ve learned during my years crime fighting with Sherlock-”

“Years?” Tim interrupted. “As if you can start throwing that around, you’re not even forty.”

“-there’s always a sidekick. The man who tortured you instead of Grendel-”

“John, you need to stop fixating on that. I’m fine; there was no permanent damage-”

“And you need to stop fixating on the fact I was almost captured,” John ignored the way Tim was working his jaw, the tenseness around his eyes. 

After a moment of silence, Tim made his tense pug face and looked off, “Fine.” It was a familiar sound, he’d need a little time to settle himself and then it would be fine. Put on the shelf. They’d try this John’s way for now.

“Adair should have that program of his ready today either way,” John tried for peacemaking. He only got a grunt in response so he headed off to his room to give Tim some space. The flat was about the size so that the only sense of privacy really came from going into a bedroom or the lav and closing the door. There wasn’t much they could do until Adair sent the file anyway. It was a neat little mathematical formula that spoke to the city’s electrical grid, looking for any surges in power required to try and repair Grendel’s time gun. Governments were beginning to digitally observe their vital systems. Setting systems to record water, electricity, wireless networks in what Tim explained as the infant stage of a vast observational network that would grow in the next ten years to solve all sorts of problems and prevent all sorts of terrorist attacks as well as cause all sorts of issues for the police force. Right now it was still young and experimental, its potential not fully understood, but after giving a little explanation to Adair, letting him analysis the app on Tim’s phone that was branches from its roots but still enough for a mathematical mind to understand. Tim was able to give him enough information so that he could put something together that didn’t so much watch the watcher, as look over the watcher’s shoulder.

As soon as that was done John and Tim would be able to at least track down where the gun had been and get a hold of it. After that to be honest, they weren’t sure what they’d do. Tim still tried to subdue his urge to be martyred and returned to his wife and John tried to let on he was fully aware of the internal struggle. The offer of discovering the gun, of getting the nervous Austrian scientist to do something scientific to it and fixing everything was the only thing he had to just come out and say he cared about Tim and wanted him to stay. Everything else felt too much like helping someone into the recovery position.

John opened his bedside drawer and looked down at his phone. It was still there, still hadn’t moved. He wasn’t going to be a coward about this. He ignored the text from Sherlock to 

**Mr. Norton, I hear you’d like to talk. – W** he typed. He might as well get this over with while Tim was being puggish. He was half way through getting dressed for the day when his phone vibrated in reply.

**You’re real then? I was starting to think you were dear old Tim imaginary friend. – GN**

John wasn’t sure what to say to that. He knew that Norton was smarter than he acted. Tim had told him enough stories about the way Norton preferred to take a tank instead of a car, that one time with the jellybeans in Azerbaijan, and his propensity for dressing like he was on his gap year. And what a terrible mistake it was to underestimate the sharp, competitive power of will beneath the lazy smiles. 

It was safe to assume that there was far more to the question then just trying to ascertain John’s existence.

 **Real enough Mr. Norton** John typed, **and I should think you for letting Tim borrow your cottage. And for not asking any questions. – W**

**Asking questions is not what I do. – GN**

**Well, thank you for what you do do. – W** No, John thought, that wasn’t right. W was smoother than that. He erased what he had typed.

 **I do hope you know you were chosen from more than your discretion.** He tried before erasing that too.

There was a soft knock at the door. John looked up, startled, “Yes?” Usually Tim took more time than that to settle.

“I just wanted you to know I’m not mad at you. I know I’ve been really tense lately,” there was a short pause. “It’s on me, not you.”

“I know,” John said, trying not to wish Tim had always been his brother, instead of just hijacked into fraternity because John had felt alone while unable to share his singular experience of being erased. It was a strange comfort to know the experience wasn’t so singular. It wasn’t fair to compare Tim’s baseline grumpiness and the up and down of shouting matches and then drunk , obscene, cheerful notes trying to make up for it. “Don’t worry about it.”

There was another pause.

“I know you’re stressed, it’s fine. I’m texting Norton.”

**No its not, but you have made life a great deal easier for him, and kept him safe. You have my appreciation. – W**

**Is this the part where I ask if you’re offering me a favor? – GN**

“Let me know when you’re done,” Tim answered. John listened to the soft tread of bare feet into the kitchen. Being British could be quite the convenience when it came to loaded conversations. 

**This is the part where you say you’re welcome and I’ll give you a thank you gift when it would best be of use. – W**

**I’ve always wanted a get out of jail free card. – GN**

John gave Norton’s answer a firm look. He wasn’t prepared for his gratitude to become a carte blanche for illegal shenanigans.

**Holy moly you’re worse than the maiden aunt. I can feel the power of your disapproval travel transatlantic. I’m joking! - GN**

**Although I will accept daring prison escapes at any time. – GN**

**Norton did have a way of making you want to get just one more word in edgewise. It made him think of Mycroft leading people to share their life stories with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and a shift back in his seat. John paused and read the message again.**

****Maiden aunt? – W** **

****That’s something for Timmy to share. :) – GN** **

Grinning, John opened the door to peer over the arm of ferret sofa at Tim. “Who’s the maiden aunt?” 

Tim blinked up from his computer and made a face. “What did Godfrey say?” 

“It’s you isn’t it!” John crowed, Tim made even more of a face. Everything was fine again then, they couldn’t be awkward around each other when Tim was being grumpily bashful. “That’s brilliant! Apparently I beat your general sense of disapproval.” 

“I’ll have to work on that then,” the stiff tucking of his chin shuffled sideways into a small smile. He passed John a mug, shifting over a little more. There was plenty of room on the sofa, but John understood the offer easily enough. Besides they were British men, they didn’t tell each other they were sleep deprived and anxious and needed each other’s company. Their laptop was open to the site Adair had set up for them, some back corner of a server where they exchanged obscure bits of information. 

John looked into his tea, watching the way his hands went pale and he clenched them around his mug. “Sherlock texted me.” 

“Are you okay?” Tim refreshed the page again, looking away to give John his privacy. 

With a sigh John elbowed him gently in the ribs, “I’m fine, it’s just strange. I haven’t even read it.” 

“Do you know if you want to?” 

“Not right now.” 

Tim smiled, hooking an arm around him to affectionately squash John. “In your own time. You have enough to worry about. As soon as Adair is done having his fits of low self-esteem I want to do another practice interview with him where he won’t end up rambling in the middle and then we can see if we can’t find that gun.” 

**Automatic Messaging Service: Category: Unauthorised Search on high Level Personnel**

**Location: Saint Bartholomews Hospital, London  
Individual: Doctor Molly Hooper; Employed: Saint Bartholomews Hospital, London Department: Mortuary; No known criminal record**

****Please promptly respond to event to avoid unnecessary escalation.** **


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, for those of you who don't know, my laptop broke on Sunday night and I wasn't up and running until Tuesday. But thanks to my hard working betas everything is up and running in time for an update! Once again my betas are Caroline and tentacle_love and my tumblr is thursdayplaid.tumblr.com. Things will very shortly become quite interesting for our dynamic duo! Enjoy!

“I’m becoming nocturnal,” Norton said from the speakerphone. His voice had a strange curl and press to it, playful and light. “Why can’t you call me at a decent hour?”

If he had been expecting sympathy, he didn’t get it from Tim who was getting increasingly anxious as the hours passed. “This is a decent hour,” he said shortly. 

So far Adair’s miracle bit of programming had discovered three exceptional hackers, a boutique that seemed to be an illegal charging station and a criminal who had rigged up some sort of electric chair in his basement. They had called the police about that last one. They had thought they had found the correct sort of surge for the gun, but they couldn’t get in to look.

 _”Oh,_ Auntie. You are _so grumpy._ How do I ever put up with you?” his voice suddenly became muffled as he leaned away from his phone for a moment. His voice suddenly curling soft and cajoling, “Hey, don’t give me that face general. You think I won’t take care of you?”

There was the sound of someone speaking in the background.

Norton’s voice was sterner this time, like velvet around a lead pipe, “No one else gets why you want that painting, do they? No one else understands how it feels to need something, every second, of every day, louder than your heart beat, louder than that unbreakable will of yours. They don’t know why you of all people, heartless, brutal, horrible you, needs such a tiny thing. But _I_ do, I know _just_ what you want, so either find someone else to do the job or go _sit_ down and _shut up._ Any more gun waving and I’m throwing you and your policia out on the lawn. Comprende?”

There was silence and then the slam of the door. 

Something terrifying had unfurled on Norton’s tongue, something honest and almost playful as if he had been sharing a good natured joke. But that pleasantry had been wielding something dangerous. It was a side to him John wouldn’t have been able to guess from Tim’s stories of daring adventure. He had imagined Norton swinging on a chandelier rope out a window and escaping, laughing, into the night like a mix between James Bond and Robin Hood. 

This had been Tim’s world, the espionage, the calls from Senegal, flying back from Brazil, Tim and Adair and Norton. He had edited himself enough for friends and family back home to realise that Tim had been cushioning things a bit, protecting John out of habit from both his family years and his isolation. 

“You could have said you were in the middle of business.” Tim was looking steadily at the computer screen, at the address the program had gathered. It was a research facility, something official, so it could just be an experiment. But the program was designed to measure unusual surges in the electrical grid; John assumed the lab would have a fairly regulated energy plan. They’d destroy their budget otherwise. 

“It’s boring, smuggling. I can appreciate the motivation behind it, and really everyone needs a dictator in their back pocket so I took it on. But it’s never as interesting as anything you have me find for you. What’s it this time? Moon rocks? The Downing Street mouser? The crown of the moose king of Canada?” 

Tim pulled a face like he could force Norton to accept his authority by staring priggishly at the phone on the table, “Godfrey.” 

Norton laughed in delight, “You do lift my heart Auntie, as well as make my life exciting. Tell me what you need.” 

Although it managed to annoy John, he felt a little embarrassed for feeling that way. This wasn’t just John’s fight. He had no patent on hating Grendel. He had no right to call dibs, to demand Tim do anything John’s way. Not when he had losses of his own, and certainly not when he had decades of experience at Scotland Yard and contacts all over the globe. 

Listing off the lab and what floor they were interested in, Tim spotted John’s face and nudged him gently with his elbow. They weren’t much for affectionate punches, even very silly ones. John shook his head, smiled and nudged him back. It was strange to have someone so close and affectionate, who could read him so clearly. It wasn’t as invasive as Sherlock had been, like a particularly demanding cat, but a slightly awkward, companionable sort of affection that boys have before they learn they need to be rough with things to be masculine. 

“Oh, and I found a little present for you. Your… friend needs to be more watchful.” 

“Hmm?” 

“W. I know they aren’t not you. And W obviously isn’t whoever had you running to Paris. But they have got some interesting people after them. And really, Auntie dearest, I’m a modern man. I don’t care if you have a boyfriend-”

“What?” Tim squawked, sounding most astonished. 

“So he is a man then, but your reaction was too strong for it just to be a friend. Family, delightful, and there really is trouble, it’s usually pulling hen’s teeth with you.”

“Godfrey please, the less you know the safer you are.” 

“I can’t be your only friend in the world,” Norton sounded a little concerned now amidst his triumph. “There’s no way you’re so anxious about my safety you forgot how very good I am.” 

“I’m not kidding Godfrey. This is something you need to leave alone,” Tim’s voice had dropped down into a sharper register. 

“Fine, I’ve got to go anyway, if I take any longer my client will lose interest. And if I get caught with original Renaissance art I’ll have to bribe Interpol again, and that’s just tedious. Do watch the video sometime today. I had to call in a favour to someone in the government I was trying to save up. You’re lucky I like being scowled at by you so much, I’d miss you terribly otherwise.” He hung up abruptly, not bothering with a goodbye, leaving Tim frowning and John tense. 

“Is that something we need to worry about?” John asked. 

Tim shook his head, “He’s too curious for his own good, but the greater danger is if someone captures and breaks him. I don’t think it occurs to him it’s possible. And I’d rather he not go through that. He was my friend, even though I was angry half the time, and depressed the other. I have a rather short list of those.” 

Tim was improving. John hoped he knew that, but didn’t know how to say it, so he left the sentiment there and changed the subject. 

“That’s it then?” John asked, looking over Tim’s shoulder to read the email he had opened up. There wasn’t a video file attached. There must be a second email then. A V Lupin and the number next to it, and a park where Tim could go but John couldn’t. He should probably avoid letting Norton’s contacts see him, even if they were just Norton’s contacts. It wouldn’t warm diplomatic waters to have them detained by over enthusiastic Holmeses. Although so far the Holmes must not have been searching too hard; it had been almost two months since he disappeared from that awful school, giving Sherlock a week for a grand strop that left plenty of time to be discovered. John wasn’t sure if that was what he wanted or not. A knock at the door and Sherlock on the other side. 

“Godfrey works fast,” Tim agreed vaguely. 

“Is this was he does then, for a living? He smuggles things for dictators and sets up secret meetings in parks?” 

“Actually I think he’s officially a barrister, or I guess a lawyer since he’s American. As far as I can tell he does this for fun.” 

“What do I need do I need to know about him?” John asked. “I’ve gathered he takes inhuman pleasure in teasing you until you make that hilarious face-” 

“Hey,” Tim narrowed his eyes. 

“But I’m supposed to be the all-knowing W. You had to have known something about him before you agreed to take him on as a consultant.” 

Tim’s idealism had kept strong through years of police service, even if it was a little rumpled, but his youthful rush and romanticism was gone, leaving a charming bluntness. It didn’t exactly make him an excellent story teller, but it did give everyday occurrences a pleasant gravitas. Nothing John would ever admit, but it gave him the feeling of very often being called into a debriefing by a teddy bear. 

Godfrey Norton was, Tim explained, at least superficially a good old fashioned all-American boy. Someone out of an old Hollywood movie: roguish, too young for himself and occasionally stupidly loud. His progenitors had been something of a loud, wild but generally harmless lot of the sort to drive the local constabulary to acts of madness. The family seemed to always stay between the lines of propriety and a somewhat dubious kind of fun. Everyone was fairly sure they had crossed the boundaries of the law, but there was no proof. The primary trait of a Norton, as far as Tim could tell, was a nearly neurotic need to lead an exciting life. According to Godfrey the first of the American branch was thrown off a boat for having the devil in him. It didn’t take much to get Godfrey ready to talk about a family tree with some dubious branches. 

They were first and foremost business men of a peculiar sort. The family Norton apparently made furious regular rides up and down the United States and Mexican border chased by law enforcement on both sides until they opened a ranch so they had someplace to put all the cattle they seemed to have acquired. After that generation the Nortons ran moonshine, chased by law enforcement on both sides until they opened a bar to have a place to put it all. The generation after that everyone pretended they were lawful folks and with a pocketful of highly successful bars, a decent sized ranch and the accidental discovery of oil they opened a bank to have a place to put all their money. 

It was into this proud heritage Godfrey Norton came into the world, the child of too much money and hereditary kleptomania, or rather less kleptomania and more that when they were told they couldn’t have something they immediately nicked it to show they could. Godfrey was a sensible man, excellent at seeming harmless unless you caught the other end of him in a courtroom. He raised enormous Great Danes, brought two around with him like groupies. His favourite pair were a leggy mating couple, stark white with large black spots. He liked to, Tim suspected, as a sort of mix of a power play and a prank, see the panicked looks when people saw how big his dogs really were. 

Officially he made his living practicing law where he had made a name for himself in the upper echelons as someone who could spot what people wanted. His settlement rate was apparently phenomenal. On the side he traveled for philanthropic reasons deigning to manage the family estate from time to time. 

Unofficially he was one of the best smugglers in the world. He was never caught, never hinted at, never identified, no one willing to rat on their supplier. He smuggled executive assistants stationed in China mushy peas and engineers in Ghana real kosher hot dogs and dubious government officials in Argentina fine merlots for specific years. 

If things had proceeded the way they would have should the timeline never have been altered, Godfrey Norton would accidently witness a murder and kill a man in self-defense in the year 2024 at which point he would be arrested and his epic smuggling ring would be revealed. Tim would be a DCI at the time. No one had known quite how to classify Godfrey, no one was quite prepared for small time smuggling endeavors on such a large scale. 

Tim remembered the fervour of the case. It was hard to forget a man like Godfrey Norton. Godfrey hadn’t called him Auntie then, he had been angry and desperate. His dogs shot after one of them had tried to protect him by killing a constable. 

Smart, dangerous, and with fingers in all the places Tim had needed, he had approached Godfrey and after a brief altercation had somehow become as much an object of amusement for the man as an occasional client. Things, even unusual hard to find things, didn’t interest Tim that much to Godfrey’s irritation. Each acted its part as a tool at his disposal and then discarded. Something had to be said of intrigue, at least, for a man who could find what everyone wanted, Godfrey kept coming up short. 

“I think that’s part of the reason he keeps doing jobs for me,” Tim admitted. “Other than the stuff like mocking up the Timothy Westmorland persona for me." 

The little number counter on Tim’s email suddenly changed. 

“Should you get that now?” 

“Might as well,” Tim said. “I have to change soon anyway for the meet up. Do you want me to pick you up some dim sum?” 

Shaking his head, John leaned back against the arm of the sofa. “I need to finish off the chicken before it goes off.” 

“Just don’t get food poisoning, I’m a horrible nurse,” Tim grinned at him as he opened the email. “’An old project of yours was flagged, so I looked into it. I thought you should see what I discovered,’” Tim read as he double clicked on the attachment. 

There was a pause before the media player popped up and after a moment the inside of Lestrade’s office appeared in black and white, Mycroft lurking in the corner looking exceptionally tight lipped and Sherlock leaning precariously across Lestrade’s desk captured mid rant. The time stamp was marked about a month ago. 

“-under your nose, under the whole of Scotland Yard’s nose. He must have thought we were such idiots. I talked to him. He’s a widow, and he has a drinking problem, and he’s _short_.” 

“There is a certain elegance to his brilliance,” Mycroft agreed. He still looked distinctly terrifying, but less like he was liable to perform cat scans with his eyes. “No one pays attention to the staff.”

“Are you seriously telling me that some sort of super genius has been emptying my trash?” Lestrade boggled. 

“It got him everything he needed, he could keep a watchful eye on John. He could observe Sherlock’s cases, he was out of the way and unobserved,” something tired dragged itself across Mycroft’s face. 

“This is awful,” Sherlock threw his arms in the air. “I thought W, or should I say _Westmorland_ ,” he snarled, “was off solving some great puzzle and turned John over on that account. Now it turns out he was off recovering from alcoholism.” 

“You’re certainly one to judge someone on that account,” Mycroft said flatly. 

The timestamp suddenly jumped two weeks. Sherlock didn’t look well; he had lost weight, and even with the black and white John could tell his colouring wasn’t that great. 

“I need John back,” Sherlock snarled, pacing, pacing, fingers flying through the air. Lestrade looked about ready to bludgeon him. 

“The best lead we’ve got to Westmorland is the bloke getting on the train-“ 

_”No!”_ Sherlock almost shouted before visibly rearranging himself. “No, John doesn’t like to be carried, no one carries John. It’s just not done. He’s somewhere else, he has to be-”

“He’s looking for me,” John whispered. “He’s looking for me Tim.” 

“And his brother’s not nearly as much of an idiot. Pack up.” 

“But he’s looking for me!” 

“And he’s going to find us!” Tim snapped back. “Pack up now, I’ll start scrubbing the apartment, then we’re getting you to a safe house. If Mycroft can find us, then Grendel’s mole will too. And then Grendel will shoot you until you die and I’m not losing anymore family. _So pack._ ” 

John leapt off the sofa and ran into his room to pull his backpack out from under his bed. Half an hour later Tim was finishing up the apartment while John stood feeling awkward and exposed in the hall. “Tim! Hurry up!” 

“You talk that way to your papan?” Madame Durant asked as she let herself into her flat, arms full of groceries, a bag set down so she could try to open the door. 

“He’s not my dad,” John said automatically, before he could think that was probably a bad idea. Part of anonymity was maintaining the shroud of vagueness. They had never specified the exact nature of their relationship.

“Uncle,” Tim said, smiling tightly. “And we are decidedly late to go see family.” 

“Tim,” John said pointedly and nodded toward the bags Madame Durant was struggling with. 

“You are the worst,” Tim groused and snagged the bag on the floor to carry for her. “Here, sorry, au revior.” 

“Oh,” she blinked and watched, startled as Tim retrieved John’s hand and led him away. 

“Sorry,” he continued, “But we can’t miss our train. We’ll try not to make too much noise when we come back!” 

They didn’t know Madame Durant terribly well out of necessity, but they knew her well enough she might work as a bit of cover should anyone come looking for them. And if not, Tim wasn’t particularly quiet, other people at home could attest to their eventual return. “Tim, it’ll be fine.” 

“They were searching for information on my old alias,” Tim said much quieter. “I told you I’m not losing anymore family. No more hospitals, or funerals, or black crepe, I’m serious.”

John squeezed Tim’s hand tightly with his own. As soon as Tim was finished taking care of his meeting with Norton’s contact he was going to read the text Sherlock had sent him. After that whatever that was in Lestrade’s office this promised to be interesting. 

**Manipulation is obviously your game, I don’t begrudge you that. Building yourself up and not letting anyone see. John deserves better. Give him back to me, I won’t let him go again. SH**


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is way late, work knocked me off my feet a bit this week. By which I mean it knocked me off my feet a lot. But here is the chapter before the week is out! This week tentacle_love was my beta extraordinaire. Also a little warning, there is a very, very brief mention of past child abuse, if you blink you miss it, but I thought I should mention it. My tumblr is thursdayplaid.tumblr.com and I enjoy messages even though I take epochs to answer.

After reading Sherlock’s text it occurred to John how much trouble they might be in. And then he bristled, first at the idea he was manipulating anyone and then in defense of Tim. Everybody seemed to be picking on him, and while the man could indubitably handle it, John was a bit tired of it.

There wasn’t much he could do now either way. He just had to wait for Tim to get back from his park rendezvous. When they got the gun to work again it wouldn’t matter. The more Sherlock’s message sat on his brain the angrier it made him, the more frustrated. John needed to focus on other things. Such as Tim walking rapidly out of the park, one hand in his pocket. For anyone who knew anything about urban warfare, it was obvious he had a weapon in there that he was trying to be discreet about. Of course. He was also looking a bit harassed, which was better than angry and always made John want to tease Tim more. It was a good sign that they weren’t about to be shot on the spot.

Tim disappeared from view into a café and so John disappeared from the window of the green wallpapered safe house, or rather safe flat. There were a couple flats around Paris Tim had condemned through whatever sneaky police related means he always did. By the time John had arranged tea, black and peppermint respectively _(although he was tempted to throw caution and the peppermint out the window)_ , on the table of the lima bean coloured kitchen. Tim jumped easily through the window muttering to himself about young knees and clearing the room with an anxious sweep and side step.

“No one here but me,” John said, adjusting the plates. 

“Shut up,” Tim snapped, bending so his forehead hovered a moment over the crown of John’s head, his hand hovering a moment over the back of John’s neck. “I worry.” For a moment every tense motion of Tim’s kind paranoia flared up loud in his ears, everything was taut with meaning and information. The space, Tim’s breath, the smell of roses and grass, his posture, the placement of his feet, the-

Pressing his eyes closed, John forced himself to _breathe in,_ breathe out, _breathe in,_ breathe out. The murmur of static that had taken up right behind his eyes cut off, leaving him tense. Flexing his hands on either side of the plate, John listened to Tim’s breathing, the sudden catch and concern in it.

“Are you alright?” he leaned back to give John space.

“Fine.”

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately. Has it been something I’ve-”

Anger curled and snapped in John’s belly, making him reckless. Angry like he’d been with his stupid useless leg. He slammed his hands down on the table, interrupting Tim. “I’m _fine._ ”

It took him a moment to realize that had even burst out of him. “Sorry, sorry. Just. It’s headaches I think.”

“It’s not anything I’m doing?”

“No.” John looked up at Tim, licked his lip absently. “No, nothing like that.”

“If you’re having any… problems you’ll let me know.”

“Of course.”

“Good.” It should have been awkward, but Tim sat down across from John, sipped his tea and made a face.

“Probably a little hot, sorry.”

“Not at all, I need something bracing.” He made a face again, this time a preemptive one, and took another sip of tea. “Godfrey’s contacts are just as bad as he is. Lupin leapt out of nowhere and disappeared in about the same way. He was a bit nosy, nothing too bad. He got us this,” he fished inside his pocket and placed two key cards on the table and a folded packet of brown paper tucked closed in some sort of arcane arrangement that had John confused how to open it, “and a window of time.” He paused to set his gaze sternly on John until he stopped pressing and pulling at the edges of the packet where he found a fold that looked promising.

John blinked up at him, the faint intrigued expression on his face drawing back to make room for proper abashment. He slid the paper puzzle away and folded his hands together on the table.

“Hmm,” Tim gave him a careful look. “Like I said a window. We have an hour to get in and out, which should be plenty of time. If we get close enough to the lab I can jump onto the wifi network in the lab and pick my way into the emergency response system. I’ll trigger an evacuation. I go in a suit and you hide in a cart, we roll up to the lab marked on this map,” he tapped the packet. “One of us grabs the gun and we get out the same way.”

“That’s it then? We’ll have the gun by the end of the night?” A sudden relief overtook him with such force he was afraid he’d be swept clear up to the green ceiling. Finally a chance to try and repair things. He knew, logically, realistically that it was possible there was no way to fix the tear Grendel had made when he tried to rip John out of existence. But there was that childish, hopeful part of the human heart that always believed that there would be some sort of magic reset. That things would never be allowed to get too bad. That reserved a place for horses riding toward the sunset, for last ditch escape, for home to stand against the storm. Toy soldiers put away, everyone alive in time for tea, each child called home by referee, by mum, horrors gone like puffs of wind. Beneath the logic, that part of John was sure everything could be fixed again. Surely Tim felt the same, but his face was set into professional lines. If his heart raced at the possibility, he reigned it tightly to be sure it would become a reality. John tried to focus.

“Well,” Tim said. “You’re the army doctor. It’s not like I haven’t planned sting operations before, but I thought we could plan out the rest together. We’ll need the Austrian for one thing, unless you’ve got a secret degree in physics in your back pocket.”

“Is he still settled in the… um.” It wasn’t in a safe _house_ per se. But it was a fairly safe place with someone he trusted.

John hadn’t been contacted, hadn’t been able to be contacted because of the mess with Moriarty; he had set things up and left them.

“He should still be with your friend, unless they were murdered. Or if our scientist friend has had a breakdown. He was nervous enough sitting among the tax books.”

“No one knows the tunnels like Bailey.” John’s stomach clenched despite his euphoria. Bailey could get a bit… edgy at times, but he had a good head on his shoulders. After the bomb blast Bailey flinching back into the tunnels after his loss in a way that was painfully familiar to John. He needed something to do, something to keep him focused on something other than his failure, something to give him a sense of usefulness again. “Dr. Tobel will be fine.” He hoped Dr. Tobel would be fine, or there’d be quite a bit of trouble. “Any idea why the map we need is folded into some sort of origami vault?”

“Because Godfrey is the worst,” Tim groused. “And he’s being passive-aggressive about calling him while he’s so busy. I can find something to cut it open. We don’t have time for power plays. I’m not going to make time for power plays.”

“I can get it,” John said. “It can’t be that hard or he wouldn’t have done it up this way.” He picked up the packet again, and let it sit for a moment in front of him. He just _looked_ at it. The paper was of deceptively high quality, although it had the look of brown postal paper about it, it was smooth and subtle, the edges melting together. The longer he looked at it, the closer he stared, faint flickering lines began to appear in his mind’s eye. The edges appeared as an overlay. /he tried ignoring different lines to see if they made different shapes. Such as _I’m apparently insufferable when you don’t book my services ahead of time._ The lines in his mind’s eye curled and opened as clear as if they had been neon signs directing him where to push and pull. Unfurling, the packet spread open, the map of the lab delineated in hall and vents and electricity. 

Tim looked slightly constipated.

“Not terribly hard once you give it a good look.”

“You would tell me if you weren’t feeling yourself, wouldn’t you?” Tim asked, cut across John’s cautiously good mood. The angst was getting boring.

“No. I’d wait until my brain imploded,” John snarked back. “No need to look so surprised. I am a doctor.”

“I’m not surprised,” Tim’s face cleared at the familiar heartbeat of their banter. “You just seemed to have become smarter since we first met.”

“I think,” John said with an imperiousness that would have made Bad Davey proud, “that you’ll find I’ve always been this smart, it’s just that now less of my brain power is occupied with getting you to ingest things other than coffee beans and misery, and more in solving the Grendel problem.”

“I always thought you had smarts enough, with you keeping pace with Holmes.” He downed the rest of his tea and held out the cup for more, looking entirely too pleased with himself now. “Since you can’t have any of the food stuff and I’m sure you don’t want it to go to waste.”

John slowly set down his cup of peppermint tea in its saucer, its path as dramatically weighted as that of the stars. Carefully lifted the thermos that was their makeshift teapot with both hands and with narrowed eyes executed the slowest tea pour in history. The tea - innocent as it was in the affair of fraternal affection - was trapped, dangling at a pace so ponderous that for a moment it didn’t seem to know whether or not gravity had the right to affect it.

Tim just grinned as if he had all the time in the world. It was hard, John knew, for Tim to say he loved anything. Ages were needed to work up to it. A shift in the continental plates. He got as close as he could to it. But he didn’t trust himself with the expression of love unless it was sideways, or backwards, or at strange angles. “And I’ve got a present for you.”

That made John’s brow wrinkle, “What? Why?”

Reaching into his pocket with his free hand he set the familiar weight of a hand gun on the table. It had a matte shine to it, a presence like a soldier at ease. A gun was very rarely just a gun. It had an understated personality that either overtook or mirrored the people who held it, becoming a tool or an escape. 

Or an extension of one’s desire to protect.

With the reverence of someone who had suddenly found something missing, John set down the thermos and lifted the gun, felt its weight, checked the clip. “I use a Browning.”

“This will fit your hand better. And everyone uses Sigs. If I went for a Browning we’d have the Holmeses even faster on our tails.”

“Do you really think they’ll be after use then?”

Tim gave him a look, “It would be stupid not to, Sherlock is too emotional right now. It’s Mycroft I’m worried about, he was too solicitous with you.”

John tilted his head in silent question.

“You’re a fascinating conundrum any direction someone looks at you. And I can understand the desire to try and repeat the past with better results. He may not even realize it, but I recognize the way someone looks at a second chance.” 

If Tim wasn’t looking at him with a face so firm and serious, John would have laughed at him. Instead his brain turned in a different direction. Mycroft hardly was the sort of man to sigh over the discordant relationship with his brother, but there was a hint of something in the idea of wanting to raise a genius child again with a chance to avoid any vicious rivalry at the end of it. Although John had the idea that Sherlock was a bit like Tim in that he had been bitten to the quick too many times for loving things, and the only way left he had to say he cared was to bite first. Maybe that’s how he thought people cared for each other. With quick wit like bared teeth.

“If nothing else he’d like to get his corkscrews in us.”

“If it comes to that,” Tim said. “You’re to let him grab me. He’ll find out that I’m nothing much, just like Grendel did. And you’ll be able to disappear much easier than I will.”

John slammed the magazine home with one small hand. “Absolutely not. It doesn’t matter anyway. We’re getting the ray gun by tonight, and then things will be fixed. It’ll become a nonissue.”

“If this works,” Tim said. “I won’t remember you for a long time. I’m in my fifties.”

“I’ll reintroduce myself,” John grinned. “But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. First the ray gun, then the scientist, then we plan.”

Moving the odds and ends of their tea, Tim made room for the map to be unfolded. It took John a moment to find what he was looking for. “Here,” he pointed with one small finger. They still looked weirdly… spritely… delicate… _small_ to him. “Service entrance.” He traced the zigs and zags of the hall, “Look how close it is to our target lab.”

“Go ahead and call Bailey, I’ll set the rest of this up,” Tim said, focused on reading all the little notations on the map.

Bailey seemed glad to hear from him, it was hard to tell over the noise of the London street in the background. “Give me a mo. I need to find an alley or something. Tobel’s trying to educate me, keeps taking me to museums.”

“He’s meant to be hidden.” 

“You think I don’t know how to hide someone in London?”

“Of course not Bailey,” John sighed and rubbed at his brow. He was working his way to early wrinkles. “Thank you for doing this.”

Bailey said something in Gaelic, mostly to himself. “Tobel’s okay. I’m taller than him and he’s old anyway. I could take him if I had to.”

There was no choice but to ignore the implication behind that. It wouldn’t help anything. “I was wondering actually if he might be ready to be moved again. We need him shipped to France.”

“I don’t know France,” Bailey made a considering sound to himself. “And Tobel needs watching. He talks to strangers, like he doesn’t know any better. And he’s absolutely hopeless at hiding his readies. He’s like a babe in the woods.”

“Babe in the woods?” John hoped his raised eyebrows came through on the phone.

“Took me to see this opera thing. Swear on my mum, it was about the stupidest kids you’d ever seen, it’s no wonder Tobel’s hopeless if that’s the sort of thing he was raised on. For my education you know. He makes me talk weird too. Picked enough pockets to go out to eat at a real place though. But that’s not what this calls about. I’ll get him over. You’ll text me the place?”

“I’ll get the address to you,” John agreed, trying not to laugh at Bailey’s suddenly improved diction.

“I need to get back before Tobel talks to a copper or something. He tries it all the time you wouldn’t even believe. I’ll call you tonight and we can catch up.”

“I appreciate it,” John said, biting his smile at the corners. Bailey sounded so incredibly concerned about Tobel’s dangerously stupid behavior. Like a parent with toddlers who were entranced with trying to lick light sockets.

“Yeah,” Bailey agreed. “And thanks for something to do Doctor.”

“I needed someone I could trust.”

Bailey started to say something, but that was interrupted by him shouting, “Tobel! What did I tell you?”

John tried not to laugh as he told Tim what Bailey said.

 

 

At the end of an hour of planning and a bit of discreet dodging, they ended up surveying the service entrance where there was an unfortunate trickle of people smoking. The two of them stood awkwardly in the parking lot before they realized that was making things a bit, well, awkward. Through combined efforts and Tim complaining about archaic machinery they broke into a car and like something out of an old cheesy cop movie slunk low in their seats to watch the door. The French scientists who have snuck out the back seemed to have mastered the art of smoking like they were extras for a dramatic art film. John didn’t know whether he should be impressed or vaguely irritated. “This will make things a little harder.”

Tim, who had been fiddling with a pair of binoculars had gone tense as a wire, body trembling with tension.

It put John on alert, made him sit up and reach impatiently so he could have a look at what had Tim so tight around the mouth. But Tim wasn’t giving the binoculars up, just tensing back into the seat. Leaving it, John simply leaned forward and squinted. There was just a guy. Regular height, regular features, bluish coat. There was something about him vaguely harried, as if he lived in a state of perpetual sleeplessness.

“I know him.” The words snap and crack brokenly through Tim’s lips.

Tim looked a bit white around the mouth, the reason why was fairly easy to guess. Grendel’s team at the lab watching over his awful time gun; Tim’s last run in with the members of Grendel’s team. The realization crept in with animal intelligence, sleek and absolutely sure of itself, it made John shiver.

“He was the one who tortured you.” He watched Tim turn away, fiddling with his surveillance gear. It took two deep breaths before John was acting reasonably, in a way that would actually be helpful. He looked up at the regular looking man and tried to imagine him calmly following Grendel’s half coherent instructions. It hung in his brain, the care it took to place the small controlled burns in the boyish flesh of Tim’s side. Suddenly John had the powerful urge to shake his brain out and watch it. His stomach twisted with a powerful dark fisted nausea. “This is excellent, I’ll be able to shoot him.”

Tim watched him.

“He’s not a very nice man,” John said darkly. Not liking the look and not liking the tense shattered paleness that had preceded it.

“Not like that John.”

No, not like that. He shouldn’t. In his lap, John released his clenched hands.

“I do care about you too you know. And I’m not afraid of him.”

 _Of course not,_ John thought, _your hands always shake like that._ “When will the diversion start?”

The trembling started to recede as Tim checked his watch. “Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen if anything goes wrong. Nothing will go wrong of course.”

“Of course not,” John had become hyper aware of the weight of his gun at his back. A finality he didn’t feel.

 

 

**David, this is a kind of strange request. But Elsie father is dead and she doesn’t have anyone else who’s a good male friend.**

**I mean except for me, but I can’t because I’m getting married to her, you know that sorry**

**It’s just you’re the closest thing to a best friend I have. And you don’t have to if you don’t want to it’s just you and Elsie really seem to get along and so I was just wondering, would you mind walking her down the aisle?**


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Terrefic tentacle_love took care of this while Caroline's having school adventures, but there were some last minute additions at the end she didn't get a crack at, so if there are any errors at the end, it's my fault, not hers. This chapter introduces Grendel, the gun and a small break down. Enjoy! Visit me at americanjedi.livejournal.com or thursdayplaid.tumblr.com for more information than you could possibly want about anything.

When the siren went off just before the ten minutes was up the man who had tortured Tim jumped away from the side of the building, his panic obvious, and fumbled with what John assumed was a key card before rushing inside with the kind of hurry that turned people into all palms and no fingers. As soon as he was through the door the two of them sprang out of their misappropriated seats and made for the door as discreetly as they could. The trick would be to get in before lab techs started to barrel out, but after the cameras cut off.

Tim’s phone buzzed and he was up the concrete steps to the door, looking like some strange life sized doll, pale and brown and burgundy, against the massive beigeness of the side of the lab. John followed at a slower pace, one hand under his coat and against the gun at the base of his back. Tim raised his phone to the key card reader and pressed some button on the screen. The door made a wooshing sort of click as it unlocked and Tim swept John inside with a gentle sweep of his hand. The sound of an alert siren erupted from inside the room at a pitch and frequency John wasn’t altogether prepared for though he didn’t have much time to react to it. The space beyond the service door wasn’t particularly large, hardly a couple meters in width, all whitewashed concrete with a pair of mail trolleys yellow and blue respectively. In such cheery colours it looked a bit like some giant child had pushed a few toys into a corner. 

To the left were concrete stairs going up and a cargo elevator. It only took a moment for Tim to disable the emergency lockdown and pop the doors open. The elevator was hushed once they were inside, as if the heavy quilted fabric hanging from the walls had made for them a nest. It was barely a moment before Tim had the doors closed again, shutting them up in the quiet, quilted space. Against the far wall was a cart, a deep shade of blue with huge letters on the side of it. John started to head for it, but the cart was almost taller than he was; there was no point in trying to get anything out of it.

“You aright?” Tim asked, pulling open the top flap and pulling out the bright red contamination suit to pull on over his clothes.

“Oh, I’m used to looking the world in the navel by now,” John snapped with clenched fists.

Pausing in taking off his worn down boots, Tim looked at him as if he was struggling to get on the same page John was on. “No,” he said finally getting it. “I meant with the extraction, you’re good? Ready to go?”

John suddenly felt embarrassed, looking away for something to distract himself with, but of course there wasn’t. The only thing of interest in the space was Tim struggling to get into the gear. “I’m fine. Ready.”

Before he was too overburdened with the weight of his contamination suit Tim reached in and hefted out the containment barrels, adding new scuffs to the scarred wooden floor. “Good. Are you also ready to be boosted in? Once you’re in there you can unzip it from the inside. I’ll give you a nudge when it’s time.”

“Sure,” he still felt fairly abashed, enough that he didn’t even put up a token protest at being hefted up and dropped inside, and the gentle press of Tim’s palm curled against the back of his neck for a brush of a moment.

“Go ahead and close the top,” John told him, sitting down in the cart to brace himself.

“Sure thing Captain,” Tim grinned at him and zipped the top, keeping a watch on him as the lid closed. The cart was sturdy, meant to transport containment barrels. John’s small weight was no burden on the firm bottom or the thick industrial fabric; no one could even tell he was in there. He was taking a moment to take deep breaths and center himself when the top came up again with Tim’s face distorted and fuzzy through his spaceman suit, his head piece tilted up so a sliver of his chin showed.

“Here,” Tim held out a giant clunky pair of headphones; they looked like something you’d find in the airport.

“What’s this for?” They curved like some piece of alien technology in his hands, something mysterious and strange.

“On the upper floors the siren is going to be very loud, the helmet will cut out some of the volume for me, but it won’t for you, and you’re ears are young,” his mouth tilted up gently at the corner. “Even if the rest of you isn’t. Don’t want to make you deaf before your time. See you in a mo,” he said finally and closed the cart on him again.

 _It wouldn’t matter when this was all fixed,_ John thought, _Not that they were talking about that._ Tim would try to go, which was ridiculous. The time John was pulled out of was before the time Tim was, if something went wrong it was better for John to go first, wait a little while, find Tim and tell him his toes had fallen off or whatever and then they could fix the gun and Tim could go back to his family. It was a bit selfish for Tim to always want to go first, lead the charge, as if it wouldn’t kill John just as much to be without him as it would him to suddenly lose John. It hadn’t been that long since he lost his family, John knew, remembering the burden of widows and widowers struck down with shock. To lose that and one’s children… 

It hadn’t even been a year. Tim had thrown himself into danger with a lack of self-preservation so hard John wasn’t sure that he realized how hard he threw himself. Especially now that he had John too.

There were some things the people you love do wrong that one should never mention, as if the recognition of it would be worse than stopping the habit. It was better for John to watch and keep pace, and not say anything else until Tim stopped living in a graveyard in his head. It took time.

He was getting there. 

If nothing else John suspected he was starting to get bored of the depression, his anguish notwithstanding. That he just wanted to remember how happy he’d been without a complimentary side of vivisection by guilt. 

The cart shifted, the kicking off of its brakes a heavy, industrial feeling and its movements steady and inescapable. John sat down inside like a bird in his nest and waited to be signaled.

The bleat of the siren when they exited the elevator was hypnotic, pulsing like a migraine, like a hammer inside the skull. The abominable sound of it had John finally giving in to the clunky headphones that put John in mind of sheep pressed tight to his head. They weren't what could be called comfortable by any stretch, but they made him feel slightly less likely to burst apart. The sound was likely engineered to keep the lab staff from staying to play with their microscopes when mold samples had mutated and gone sentient next door. 

It was the sort of thing Sherlock would do, disdain the slightest interference in the middle of an experiment, even if it was some mold monster. 

The siren had been muffled slightly by the heavy drapes around the containment cart, traditionally holding barrels and boxes impervious to even the maddest of science. Now containing a tensed army doctor, bristled up absently to appear bigger, even with only himself to see. The little space was vaguely organic, even in weighty peacefulness. Alarm lights cast the space, warm from John's flexing anxiety, blue and purple in waves. The cart jumped infinitesimally with each of Tim’s jogged footsteps as they went at speed around corners and down corridors. Finally they came to a stop, John rocking slightly with the suddenness of it and left to wait, counting seconds, as time seemed to lean forward on its tiptoes before tipping over.

The top of the cart suddenly disappeared, leaving John blinking at the sudden influx of flashing lights so much more intense without the protection of the little closed cart cubicle. Face partially obscured by the hood of his suit, Tim pressed his eyebrows together, expression tense and pulled with annoyance. In his hand was his phone, the screen reading _PRIORITY ACCESS, CARD READER KEY._ It took John longer than he’d care to admit until he realized Tim couldn’t work the buttons on the screen with his gloves on.

John lifted the phone against the card reader like he’d seen Tim do and pressed the button. For a moment it looked like nothing would happen, and wouldn’t that be charming after the favours Tim had had to call in to get them this far, before the light ponderously turned green and the door shifted slightly as the lock disengaged. Tim got the door open before it could change its mind and shoved the cart, and John, through.

John turned in the cart, trying to find a way to ask _can you pick me up out of this thing?_ without asking to be picked up out of this thing, and froze, words stopped in his throat and heart stopped in his chest. There it was.

_There it was._

After a sort at least. 

The last time he had seen it he had more of a view of its muzzle than its length. It was long, boxy. It looked a bit like a large water gun with an edge added on instead of rounded off, but filled with something radioactive. Whatever it was that was powering it had a strange bluish glow that made John feel a bit headachey and nauseous. The barrel of it looked like it had been gold at some point strangely enough, but had discomposed sideways into something greenish in tint. There were cables, vaguely like remoras clinging to it and tablets scattered around in disarray as if they had been shot down in surprise and left where they lay. When he looked at Tim his face had gone still with hiccuping shock.

That was all well and good, but they needed to move.

After a brief tug on Tim’s sleeve he seemed to come out of it enough to grip John under the arms and lift him, after a false start, out of the cart. John ran to the lab table, clamoured up a chair and reached out to touch the gun.

He promptly was introduced to the unique experience of falling from a height while vomiting. His vision swirled and spotted, his skin crawled and compressed, his bones aching; the puzzle pieces of his body trying to find any excuse for the physical _wrongness_ he was feeling.

“We have to destroy it,” he snarled between his teeth. “Tim, help me destroy it.”

“John,” Tim mouthed from where he was kneeling by John’s side, bracing his shoulders. John had almost forgotten about the earphones.

“Please,” John realized he was crying, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered until that _abomination_ was gone. “Help me kill it, I have my gun, we can shoot it. We can-”

Tim pinched him hard, the jolt of it chasing up his arm and spreading like shattered glass.

“Stop.” John read Tim’s lips, reeling with surprised betrayal. “We can’t. We need it to fix things.”

“That doesn’t matter, nothing matters but-” Tim pinched him hard again, pulling off his hood, his face flickering back forth with surprise, fear and determination.

“My family John,” Tim gripped his shoulders hard and shook him.

Selfish, that was selfish when that thing still lived. How could Tim be so selfish? John would do it himself…

But…

But Tim wasn’t being selfish. John gripped his head with both hands and moaned. “What was that?” He couldn’t hear the answer, but Tim squeezed his shoulders as if emphasizing a point. There was a betrayal now in the corner of Tim’s eyes when John looked up, almost considering, and it nearly broke John’s heart. John leaned forward with his arms around Tim’s neck, “I’m sorry Tim. I’m sorry I don’t know what came over me. It was- I don’t know. You know I want to get you back to your family.”

When Tim finally gripped him back it nearly crushed the air from his lungs. He could feel the breath against the side of his head as Tim spoke, and wished he knew what he was saying.

“I’ll get the paperwork,” John said. “You take care of the gun, I won’t risk touching it again.”

Ashamed, John disengaged from the hug as soon as Tim allowed him to and avoided the gun and its cables as if it were the plague. Tim had relied on him all this time to help him; he wouldn’t make him regret that.

Most of the blueprints were filled with diagrams that didn’t make sense and strange equations that almost looked like there were parts divided by zero. There were big arches of scribbles that made no sense, but John didn’t take the time to look at them much. Even with his resolve strengthened, just looking at pictures of the inside of it made him feel a bit dizzy. He was flipping through the sheets of equations and diagrams when he discovered a wide piece of graph paper, nearly as big as the sweeping blueprints. It made John go still for a moment, just looking at it, with nothing on it but small, precise, perfect handwriting repeating: **NO, NO, NO, NO**. Finally, at the bottom, in small, precise, strangely childlike writing was scrawled, _we have to kill it._

He swept up the blueprints, trying to stack them into as tidy a pile as he could, not thinking about those rows and rows of perfect no’s. He waited for Tim to lower in the gun, swaddled in lab coats, into the cart and then drop the blueprints in after it. John didn’t dare get back into the cart with it now and Tim didn’t dare to put him there. They checked up and down the hall and then set off at a trot, the hood of Tim’s suit flapped behind him. They had system, John peeking around the corner and waving Tim on if the way was clear; people were just as likely not to look down as they were up. It was a system that worked until John almost ran straight into Dr. Grendel.

While he was stunned and stumbling his way backward, Grendel raised a hand and clawed down with nails that were gnawed to the quick, showing dark, blackish-burgundy pools of blood trapped beneath, snagging against the front of John’s jumper.

He had never in his life felt such an intense hatred. He was willing to rip out Grendel’s throat with his teeth if he could do it without touching him. Apparently it was a feeling the two of them shared.

Grendel bared his teeth, jaw hanging low and frothing spit dripping pendular from the corners of his mouth. He looked like a rabid animal, saliva glistening behind his teeth before foaming around bottom lip. It looked like he had been eating soap John thought hysterically, flinching back, his heaving headphones knocking loose to hang around his neck awkwardly. Belly dropping past the soles of his feet, John stumbled through the powerful swoop of nausea. Without the giant headphones making him John stumbled in shock at going from a world with mute on to a blare of sound. It stunned him for a moment, stuck his feet to the ground.

Grendel’s face suddenly changed, shifted. The animal ferocity melting away to something sad, and gentle, and tender. He must have been handsome once. Waves of auburn hair, a strong jaw, a distinguished nose. The sort of face you wanted to trust, you wanted to be seen with. 

“Little child,” he called earnestly past the warning siren. “Darling little nasty child. Little baby Watson. Aren’t you so lonely? Isn’t this all so wrong? It’s just a mistake, I’m not the bad guy here. This is all, it’s wrong. Just a mistake. I can erase it, if you come with me I’ll erase it and make it better. It’s just a slipped stitch I need to fix. Just a darling little mistake. It won’t even hurt. Please, just let me fix you.”

It all sounded so true, sliding through the spaces in the sirens, so… sincere. 

But his chin still glistened with spit, and the pale of his eyes where cracked through shot through with blood. John drew and braced his gun. Grendel snarled again, hands going to his belt, ripping it out so it curled through the air like a snake. All of a sudden John was so small, and his father was so angry, and he cringed as if he wasn’t a soldier, wasn’t a doctor, was only a bundle of anxious flight responses. He just watched the snap of the buckle right above his head as his shoulder plowed into a lab door, barely missing the door handle.

Tim surged forward, wild and snarling and threw Grendel sideways into the wall. The two of them fell to the floor in a knot of limbs. Tim tried to surge up and rush to John’s side, but Grendel was right behind him, crawling up his back. His face had transformed into something that made John’s hair stand up all over his body.

John’s heart stopped. Tim slammed his elbow back, missing Grendel’s nose but cracking in soundlessly against his cheekbone. Still Grendel held on.

There was a trickle of blood too near Tim’s eye where Grendel was digging his thumbnail into the skin of Tim’s face. 

John drew his gun and as soon as Tim’s arm had dropped to try and find some other place to crack him loose John fired. The first did nothing more but make Grendel flinch a little. The two of them moved like dance partners while John watched on, Grendel gripped Tim’s arm while Tim swung out, trying to lurch free. It was as clear a shot as John was likely to get. The second caught Grendel full in the belly. His mouth opened, his molars reflecting white and red, white and red from the overhead light. His hands clawed at Tim’s suit, pulling him into an embrace, “I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU WATCH ME KILL THE LITTLE TUMOR AND THEN I’LL FIND W AND-” Grendel roared until Tim interrupted him by slamming the palm of his hand into the underside of Grendel’s chin. Making a fist with his knuckles raised, Tim struck him hard in the wound. He was released in a scramble and sway, a catch of blood against Tim’s knuckles, face hard, angry. 

Murderous.

Grendel tried to catch Tim one last time and Tim turned, changing from cuddly, brotherly friend to a soldier, a commissioner of Scotland Yard. His solid body coiling together with the strength of a bear and his fist rising up with all the weight of a small moon. It slammed into the side of Grendel’s face, shocking a crater, ripples of impact into the side of his jaw and he dropped to bleed out on the floor, glistening teeth not quite sitting out anymore. “He’s not a _cancer_.”

Tim sprinted forward, his hand - which suddenly didn’t seem so big - catching John flat on the breastbone and swooping him off his feet with a loss of breath. His sneakers had no time to attempt a last ditch rubbery grasp of the tiled floor before he was tucked against Tim’s chest, a press of forehead against the crown of his head before he was dropped back down in the cart. Tim was all panic and fury, must have forgotten about John’s earlier reaction, but John hadn’t and he tried to keep his distance.

“Down,” John shouted uselessly, motioning with his gun as two men with guns came around the corner. He tried to brace his feet amongst the plans and the weight of the time gun (John had never thought it would be so heavy, in hindsight it should have been obvious), trying not to touch it and fired off a couple of shots. It was enough to get the men to duck and allow the two of them to barrel past and crash their way into the cargo elevator.

Tim knelt beside the cart, took hold of John’s face and pressed their foreheads together.

John was quietly hyperventilating in the cart and locked his arms around Tim’s neck, catching a fistful of Tim’s hair and his jumper collar.

“I’ve got you,” Tim muttered mostly to himself. “I’ve got you Johnny, you’re safe. You’re safe and sound.”

“I don’t feel right,” John said in a very small voice, suddenly sure that he wasn’t to move, wasn’t to open his eyes, wasn’t to let go or everything would fall to pieces.

“Shh,” Tim muttered in to his hair, lifting him up and bracing him on his hip. He rocked him slightly, the way one might a frightened child, holding him tight to his body. “Shh Johnny, you’re fine, you’re just fine. I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, I’m not going anywhere at all. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you. It’ll all be okay.”

The elevator doors opened and John’s body went tense, trying to go as small as possible. “Godfrey,” John could feel the tension and the relief where his cheek was pressed to Tim’s shoulder. “Godfrey quick-“

“What the-” there was an American voice John didn’t recognize.

“Not now,” Tim snapped. “Just help me get this into the van. Don’t touch the thing wrapped in lab coats. I using the decontamination gloves for that, just-“

“Just get the kid in the car,” the American ordered. “I’ll take care of this.”

 

**I have a little project for you Irene. – JM**


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basic stuff, drama, adventure, angst, emotional dialogue. Betaed by tentacle_love. Check out stuff at thursdayplaid.tumblr.com or americanjedi.livejournal.com. Livejournal doesn't love me at the moment, so for now there's a brief abatement while I try to figure out how to make it work.

“Dimmock,” John heard very far in the background. “What is this?”

Tim didn’t say anything while John fought to breathe, not sure if everything was dark because he was pressing his eyes closed or because he had gone temporarily blind from stress. Little snippets of reasonable thought bubbled up, trembled, and then disappeared as quickly as they had come. They were mostly along the lines of _there’s nothing wrong, it’s all in your head_ before he was frantically sobbing big desperate absences of sounds into Tim’s neck, vocal cords struggling with no air behind them.

His leg was _agony_.

“I need to,” Tim said, and then squeezed John tighter to his chest. “Please. Please. I can’t stand it when you’re like this.” He struggled to calm John and John struggled in shock (he needed to work out the knot, the damage, the burning in his leg, but it hurt too much to touch) and neither of them are improving while someone in the background was barking, _we need to move the stuff, give me the suit Tim._

A hand slipped into John’s inside jacket pocket and pulled something out while John’s fleeting reason fought for a slippery grip on self-control. There is the very distant sound of a phone on speaker ringing.

“What? I’m a bit in the middle of things,” Bad Davey’s voice is all irritation and put out angles as it breaks through John’s sudden inexplicable panic.

“Davey,” Tim said quickly as John’s small hand made grabbing motions toward the phone.

“Who’s this?”

“Dimmock, John’s friend.”

“Where is he? Is he okay?” Davey said immediately and there’s a soft whisper of sound, the background sound of someone who’s moving from someplace loud to someplace quiet. The irresistible, irritated demand in Davey’s voice gives John a much needed jolt of normality.

“He’s having some trouble,” Tim said, finally letting John hold the phone. Davey must have been able to hear John’s stress reaction because he cut right across Tim’s inhalation of breath to speak. 

“Johnny.” 

Tim pressed a kiss to John’s head and disappeared out the van door, leaving John curled up on the seat.

“I-” John said in such a small, small voice. More of a breath than anything. He knows he should sound bigger, but he couldn’t – “I. I-” the words died at the tip of his tongue. Breath stumbling in his throat, John tried to think of anything to say. Everything was so _scooped out_.

“I need you to talk for me Johnny. Can you do that sweetheart? Can you take some breaths? When Roost used to have panic attacks he had trouble talking too,” John had never heard this tone of voice before. It was soft and cajoling, melted butter soft. “Roost was talking about you the other day. He’s doing well in school. He doesn’t like English too much, says it’s too complicated. Writes the funniest English papers.”

It was hypnotic, stole away John’s attention in its soft drawing rhythm. 

“That’s better. You sound a bit less like you’re a broken washing machine. I need you to talk now. Where are you? Tell me where you are. Where are you hurt?”

“Paris, I’m in a van.”

“Who’s van?”

“I-” John stumbled. It was so strange to talk now. “I don’t know, Tim’s friend.” He pressed his face to the seat. It smelled of new car and oranges and wood. Orange crates. Fresh oranges. Fleet vehicle. Civil service garage.

“Tim’s with you?” Davey’s voice was quick, delineated and well edged, “Hasn’t run off?”

“I-” John tried. There was a lot of banging going on in the back of the van. Multiple voices.

“Good. Excellent. Just when he’s needed.”

John was starting to shake, his teeth clicking together in his head.

“Watson! Watson, you listen to me. I need to you stay calm. Have you got a blanket or a coat you can wrap around yourself, something warm?”

_“I want Sherlock.”_

“Of course you do.” The hiss of breath that cut across the phone line sliced into John’s ears, “Stop acting like a child.”

“I’m not a child!” John said pitifully. Hating how small his voice was.

“I know, I know, although you’re a big enough pain in my side. There’s the fighting spirit. You’ve had worse than this. And you’ve got me right? You love me.”

“Yeah,” John agreed pitifully. “I do. I saw Grendel. He was going to put Tim’s eye out.”

There was a crag of silence, and an erupting of jagged obscenities, razor wire and gardening equipment and butcher knives. “Johnny. John. I need you to look at yourself, check and see if you’re hurt.”

“I’m okay.”

 _”Just check or so help me._ I am not going to mess around, just do it.”

“I’m okay,” John said again.

“Is there any blood on you? I need to know, this is important,” Davey was all business, sharp and slick and only a little harried around the edged. “See if there’s any place you might be bleeding.”

“I- I-”

“Breathe John,” Davey ordered. “You need to breathe right now. In,” the soft rush of air against the phone’s speaker, “Out,” the wind tunnel of Davey’s exhalation. “Come on, do it with me, I’m not doing this for my health. _In,”_ he paused, listening to John’s shaky rattle. “And out.” He led John’s breathing through the shivering eternity of his panic.

“There you are love, there you are, you’re okay,” Davey’s voice curled like satin and velvet, like a big duvet five minutes before the alarm goes off. John clings to the phone with both hands. Tim had come in sometime and had John’s small body tucked close to his side, stroking his hair. Now that the attack was over John was left feeling a little sleepy. He doesn’t pay attention to where they go as the van takes off. “You want to come stay with me for a while? Elsie’s marriage is in a week and a half. Everybody loves a wedding. We’ve got a great caterer, you’ll gain ten pounds.”

“I’m staying with Tim.”

“Tim’s an idiot. He thinks you’re about three feet taller and a hundred pounds heavier than you are.”

Tim made a sound of not quite protest.

“Go shag a pineapple Dimmock, you don’t get to say anything,” Davey snapped. “He’s not a child, but if he gets anywhere near Grendel again I will do horrific things to you.”

“You know about Grendel?” Tim was suddenly tense.

“I’m Bad Davey,” he snapped sharply after a brief pause. “I know about everything. You can’t put him in danger like this.”

“There’s nowhere else for him to be. When John was with Sherlock he was safe.” His voice ravaged in anguish, broken desperate concern and the savage self-defense of people who’ve been held down with someone’s boot until they stayed down. His fingers are stroking gently at the stress sweat soaked hairs at the back of John’s head softly, like a heartbeat. “Now all of London’s dangerous. I’m the only other option. He’s capable, he just had a bit of a setback.”

Davey’s response to this is also clearly audible in space. The van swerved slightly.

“Stop it Davey,” John muttered.

“Of course love, I’ve got to go, the florist looks like she’s about to call the police. Give me a couple days to organize things and you’ll be come and stay with me, alright?”

In a few days everything should be fixed, it wasn’t a promise that wouldn’t cost him anything. “Sure Davey.”

“I mean it. You bother me again when I’ve got work to do I’ll break your legs.”

John smiled and swallowed the _I love you too._ Davey knew it, but hearing it would make him royally murderous. He’d end up burning down the florist’s in a murderous rage.

“A few days,” Tim said sharply and abruptly rung off. Shifting John into his lap, he tucked him close, ignoring his faint sounds of half-hearted irritation. Gently, he hooked his chin over John’s head, rubbing low gentle circles over his back. John meant to stay awake, but the low muttering of the American driving them and the gentle pressure of Tim’s hand on his back had his body passing alert paranoia for a convenient fugue state.

 

Waking up to a hand on his forehead in a strange place had John shooting up, fingers curled around his gun, heart kicking double time in his chest.

“Woah,” curled Bailey’s voice from above, leaving John blinking in confusion. “It’s just me Dr. Watson. I brought Tobel, as per request.” Bailey was standing with his hands up, looking at John with concern. He was a little taller, had lost a little of the boyish softness of his face. His clothes were a little bit nicer too. A lot nicer.

“Nice coat,” John croaked.

Laughing, Bailey dropped his hands to set them on his waist. “Ta. Not something I can wear in public, but Tobel insisted I didn’t wander around looking like a _hooligan or a vagabond_ ,” he imitated the accent perfectly, a shadow of inflection and diction.

“Can’t be helped,” John grinned at him, setting down his gun and scrubbing at his face.

Bailey just laughed, a bright young sound. “You doing okay?”

“Fine.” The room was small dark and warm, nothing more than a storage closet with a cot set up and a nest of dusty brown blankets.

“Yeah, that’s what I suspected. Your whatever-he-is was sulking around when we arrived, said not to bother you, but I thought you’d want to hear the next bit; after all the mess. Unless you’re still out of it.” It was disconcerting to feel the weight of Bailey’s gaze, shrewd and discerning in an earthy street child way.

“Yes,” John agreed, trying to find the balance and agility not to tilt to one side, and to pack his gun away at the small of his back while he’s at it. His leg was stiff, refusing to bend. “That I would want to be bothered, not that I need the rest. How are your kids?”

“Fine. Fretful. Fritz is clean, I told him if he messes around with drugs any more he won’t like what happens,” Bailey’s jaw set.

“What will you do?” John was curious. Also he didn’t know if Fritz was older than Bailey or not.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ve been hoping he’ll won’t call my bluff. I don’t want to have to do anything to him. Mike’s good. He’s starting to get into trading, calls himself Wiggins. It’s important to have a separation between work and home.”

John was nervous to put weight on his leg, but it needed to be done. The old familiar ache was back. He avoided thinking about it, just hobbled his way out of the room. They were somewhere dark, rusted iron and old pipes. Someone had lit the bare bulbs turning the whole place into shadows and lines of red.

“I’ve been banned from everything,” Bailey’s hands were deep in his pockets, his steps slowed for John awkward gait trying not to stumble.

“That’s probably safest.”

“What are you mixed up in doctor?”

Tensing his hands against his leg, John gave the concerned lines of Bailey’s face a glance, “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“I guess you’d know,” his voice is utterly neutral. It was as annoying as it was comforting. They passed a wall of valves and dripping pipes out of some cold war spy film. Any moment Russians in knit caps and dark leather coats are going to come leaping out from the dark, guns up and obvious.

It’s either that or a horror film monster with a large knife.

“Here,” Bailey stopped in front of a blast door open just far enough to let out a tangled root system of power cords and the murmur of voices. He brought the street sharp angle of his knuckles against the metal door before shouldering it open. Tim was standing at an old table with a white haired man it was easy to identify as Tobel, the gun delicately placed to the side and paper everywhere.

“Reginald,” Tobel said, a harmless scolding sound. He had an obvious accent, the steady pronunciation of someone not completely familiar with the language he was speaking. A fragility haunted the curved over line of his shoulders, the light wisps of his hair, the hummingbird delicacy of his features. He was about Tim’s height, dressed in a sturdy little three piece suit, like something out of a historical drama, although the waistcoat was most likely more for the warmth than anything. It was damp and the concrete and metal piping held in the chill.

“Your name’s Reginald?” John grinned up at Bailey shamelessly.

“Shut up,” Bailey scowled. He turned back to Dr. Tobel, arms crossed. “Dr. Watson wanted to be here.”

Tim was looking harried around the edges, “Dr. Watson should be asleep.”

“Doctor Watson should not be asleep. Dr. Watson wants to get this over with.” John corrected Tim.

“Doctor Watson is probably not aware of the state he was in just a short while ago,” Tim countered.

“Hold on a second.” John started to shift onto his sore leg and had to course correct into Bailey’s side so he didn’t fall over. “Can we use pronouns now, I’m fairly sure everyone here knows who I am.”

“Not that this isn’t fairly titillating,” Bailey enunciated very clearly. “But I have better things to do then watch you look sour at each other.” He turned to point one finger at Tobel, “Don’t talk to cops or people who look too happy to see you.”

“I promise I will take the upmost care,” Tobel declared with a hand over his heart. Satisfied, Bailey nodded and headed on his way down the corridor, disappearing with the ease of someone who spent most of his life in tunnels.

“Johnny,” Tim said suddenly, speaking with eyes and jaw clenched tightly.

John made a face. “Don’t you start. I don’t know what happened back there, but it’s over and left me no more damaged than I was before.”

“You’re limping.”

“I pulled something in my leg,” he rolled his eyes. If Tim caught his lie he didn’t comment on it as John winced and stepped into the small room lit with bare bulbs. “What is this place? It’s certainly got enough atmosphere for a secret meeting concerning dangerous weaponry.”

“Bad Davey sent me the location. It used to belong to a group of Moriarty’s men.”

Tensing as he came to alert, John looked at the bare bulbs, the door to the dark hall, “Anything we should be worried about?”

“I already asked him about that. _Used to belong_ is the key phrase in this case. Davey’s been picking off little groups. He was rather… cross about the danger Moriarty put you in with his little games.”

He couldn’t stop the concerned sound, “Killing people isn’t good for Davey.”

“Not much Davey does is good for him. We have other things to worry about.”

Tobel, who had been hovering in the background, made a nervous, questioning gesture, “You’re Dr. Watson. The one Tim talks about.”

“Yes,” Tim said shortly. “He’s smarter than he looks.”

“He looks like a little jam cake,” Tobel said in a mix of surprise and concern. John’s powerful scowl made him baulk, “Did I use the wrong word?”

“No,” Tim got out between hysterical giggles. “That was fairly correct.”

“Oi!” John fell into military posture. “I’m the perfect height to head butt you two in the kneecaps. Not to mention I am a professional.”

“I’m sorry,” Tim tried to choke down his laughter, “I know it’s not that funny.”

It wasn’t, but John begrudgingly let it go. It was too nice to hear Tim laugh. 

“You were hit by the ray too then?” Tobel asked.

John blinked; he wasn’t used to the idea of other people knowing.

“I do know a little bit about it. I was the head of Grendel’s team for a long time. I had to know how the gun worked. And when Tim rescued me he explained a little more.”

“Did you learn enough to reverse it?”

“There’s a chance. The machine is such an impossibility that nothing is completely sure. Even after all the time spent studying it I didn’t completely understand where it got its power. Grendel is connected to it somehow. There were obvious signs that an effect on one would have an effect on the other,” as Tobel explained his forehead creased and furrowed, his accent growing stronger, hands fluttering like birds with no place to land. “He was the only one who didn’t have an adverse reaction to touching it. We all had to wear the orange, uh, the suits, like the one Tim has.” He made a vague gesture meant to show the shape of a contamination suit.

“That is some relief,” something in John’s shoulders he wasn’t aware was tense relaxed.

“Although your reaction was stronger than most of the ones I witnesses, I frequently felt ill working with it. It is only the chance to destroy it before it can do its damage that I agree to work with it again. I believe I may be able to do what you ask. The machine works on the principle that all things are made of atoms, and all of them are moving at a set frequency, all together for each thing. It is string theory. The machine finds the vibration of the person and somehow does something to it, reverses it, or changes it to a different pitch than the rest of the universe - none of us were ever quite sure. Each time there was a successful firing of the gun something like,” he seemed to struggle for a moment. “Scar tissue is left in the memory of the machine. It obsesses over it. There are a few scars it cannot tear its attention away from.”

He moved over to make a gesture at it, “The gun had to be recalibrated after each use, as if it were taking on that damage, but I believe if we push it back to set its focus on a matching frequency we can reverse what has been done.” Dr. Tobel looked up at the two of them waiting to see if they understood.

“You speak as if it is alive.” Tim looked unsettled, previous mirth gone. “Like it can _obsess_ over things. Like it’s aware.”

“Of course not,” Tobel laughed nervously looking everywhere but at them or the gun. “Just that its systems are very complex. If it eases your mind you can think of it as a scratched record.” He laughed again, if it was meant to relax them it did the opposite.

“You’ll try to reverse the gun on me first,” John informed him in his crispest commanding officer voice.

“No.” The word erupted out of Tim’s mouth, trying to pin John in place; he shrugged it off. He knew how this should go, a swirling race track of possibilities that all came down to this. The only way to keep Tim safe. The only way to keep everyone safe. And the same way as if Tim were lying out on an autopsy table John looked down and knew what to say, how to act, how to string his words together like pearls on a string to get him where he needed to be. It made him pained, deep in his chest, the words he might have to use, how much of it was true. But he was a doctor, he knew sometimes it was necessary to cut in order to heal. Tim wouldn’t be able to remember it anyway. Not if John succeeded.

“First, Grendel used the gun on me first, several decades before you even knew he existed. If I’m shot back into my timeline I have several decades to stop him.”

“John.”

“Second, I’m more physically fit at my real age than you will be with arthritis and a twinging back in your fifties.” 

“John.”

“I am the best choice.”

“Let’s wait to think about this. You’re small and you’re not thinking clearly.”

“Shut up!” John shouted. “Just STOP IT! If I fail you get your knees back. And your back doesn’t hurt anymore, and you can eat whatever you like again. If you fail I’m stuck alone like this. You _do_ remember that I’m not actually a child right,” it flashed like lightening in John’s mind that he might be shouting. “Do you what they do to children that have no identity? They put them into homes. You were a cop, you know what happens in homes? How many times kids are beaten? How many times they’re-” he had to stop and look away, the thunder billowing out to leave the crystalline razor blade of frost. “I have been beaten and thrown away enough to last a life time. No more. You can kill yourself anytime you want without taking something like this away from me.”

Tim stared.

“Do you think I’m an _idiot?_ You think I don’t see how you don’t brace yourself on roofs, how you look at traffic. The way you rub the barrel of your gun when you clean it. And the worst thing is you’re bored of it, bored of the misery, bored of looking for chances to die without it being your fault. Here’s the chance to get your family back and all you can think about is whether or not the bloody time ray might not work right. Nothing about it works right. Don’t you dare guilt me because I have to live with that _every single day_ , the idea that almost every one I love can’t wait to get away from me.”

“I’m sorry,” Tim murmured. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry-”

“Stop,” John pressed his small fists against his small head and pretended it didn’t make him want to scream. “Something’s wrong Tim. Something’s wrong in my brain. I know you’ve noticed it. Everything is so big and so loud. I look at people and it’s like everything about them is shouting in my brain… The way Grendel acted, and the way that boy… Please. Just- Madness just isn’t to my taste.”

“Yes,” Tim murmured again, weak and apologetic. “Yes of course. Whatever you want. Whatever you want.”

 

They fixed a way with a door and a bit of string to pull the trigger without anyone touching it. John braced himself in the corner. “There were eight times the machine worked. It appears,” Dr. Tobel said working a heavy tablet, slowly moving his finger back and forth on the screen, “that you were the fourth. If this works you’ll be able to stop six firings.”

“Great,” John said. “Good.”

“It will take a few seconds to calibrate,” Tobel studiously avoided looking at Tim who was wounded and withdrawn into a corner. “You might feel some stinging.”

“Tim,” John said as the gun powered up, as it growled, whined, hissed at him. Tim looked at him with wide eyes.

“I didn’t want to be away from you, you were the only thing that made things better,” he was going to break his ribs squeezing himself so tightly.

“You’re the best brother I ever had,” John said quickly, it felt like there were a thousand small burning points all over his skin, like he was burning inside and the fire was trying to work its way out. “Just in case this doesn’t work, I lov-”

Everything was burning.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the basics, tentacle_love betaed, americanjedi.livejournal.com is my livejournal, once it gets working for me again, and thursdayplaid.tumblr.com is my tumblr. Much love and enjoy.

John _screamed._ He was caught on tether hooks, pulled apart and burning. He was reshuffling, bits of him fraying and flashing around the edges. 

His brain fell into the vacuum of the sound of his voice, the shattering echoes of himself he tried to grip hold of before his lost them. Oh it cut. It sliced him open but he held tight. Kept his mind locked tight around recognition of himself before he was knit back together until he was nothing more than a gasping intellect mute in shock and a clamped down will.

When it finally stopped it was such a relief, such a euphoria that his eyes suddenly flooded. He felt cool and clear and perfect until his physicality caught up with him. His shoulder was an anguish of fire, pain that hit him like a fist to the belly, doubling him into a knot. The sharp shocking pain of it ripping in a line under his skin, tearing him open from shoulder joint to clavicle until finally it receded enough for him to fall back with a shrill animal cry. 

Still able to hold the sensation in comparison to the broiling reshuffling he had screamed his way through, the familiar burst and bloom of the gunshot wound was much more manageable. John turned enough so when his knees failed he didn’t jar his shoulder falling back into the wall. Dropping sideways, he gritted his way through decades of wear and tear and war wounds clawing their way up through his skin. 

But his shoulder was going to be a real problem.

Retching against the v of the wall he was barely aware as Tim pulled him close. Pulling at his jumper to try and get to the source of the blood flow, hands wet and words hemorrhaging out in a babbling mess. “I’ve been shot. Tim-”

“You weren’t shot. I should’ve- I should’ve-”

“I’ve been shot, you need to apply pressure,” John repeated. Even his teeth hurt.

“No one shot you, it’s the scar coming back.”

The pain pushed him down deep. Everything drifted in a cloud of freezing heat, shouting, Tim’s worried face, bright white lights. There were people over him speaking in a half remembered language. Everything felt strange and out of proportion, too big, or too small.

“What’s your name?” said a woman with dark hair.

This was important, he knew this was important. He was a person. He _existed_. “John,” he croaked. “John!”

“His name is Hamish,” came Tim’s voice from the side. That wasn’t- That wasn’t- He faded out again just as he heard Tim’s commissioner voice snarling above him. Were they in danger? Was Grendel nearby?

When he started struggling Tim appeared in his view, hands on his face speaking in soft lilting words. “It’s fine, you’ll be fine, you big idiot, it’ll be okay. Everything’s going to be all fine. Stop fighting.”

“Tim? Tim, it’s not- It’s John- Important, it’s John.”

“Everything’s okay. John’s taken care of, John’s safe, do you understand? John is safe. I need to you stop fighting,” Tim looked terrified and stern so John laid back and let the nurse put an IV in. It was hard to focus, his skin felt like it was pulling and stitching its way across his body. It _itched._ Soon after that everything got very sleepy and soft.

When he woke again he was vaguely aware he was drugged in that particular good pain medication way and had Tim’s sleep mussed head resting at his side, hand clenched in the stiff hospital sheet. He looked so tired. His boyish face was creased, eyebrows migrating toward each other. It hadn’t worked then, something had gone wrong and it hadn’t worked. Maybe once someone was erased they could never return. Maybe everything that had been lost was lost. Poor Tim. 

For one thing he was too small, had he been aged down too? When John shifted himself heavily in bed he drowsily recognized he filled up more space than he had been forced to reconcile in these many past months. His frame had grown up and out. His feet didn’t look like something out of a fairytale anymore. Tiny and pale and not very good for running at the speed he wanted. He wiggled his feet very slowly, these feet would be perfect for running around London.

John reached out to try to do something, pat Tim on the head, poke Tim awake, something, but he noticed, in that sloppy good pain medication way, that his arm had been bundled close to his body and it was horrifically painful to move. Tim jerked awake with a start at John’s grunt of irritation, face creased with worry and lines from the sheets, sleep swollen and grim around the eyes.

“John?” He blinked and scrubbed roughly at his face.

“I’m big again.”

“I noticed, I had to haul your great heavy body up all the ladders in Paris,” Tim grumbled.

“Yeah,” John muttered back at him. “Sorry.”

“You are never doing anything like that again,” Tim’s face suddenly tightened in anger, only barely dampened by his just waking up. “I’ve thought about what you said, what you did. You tricked me. And I am just-” He held up one finger at John, pointing, “You have no idea how serious I am. No more convincing or- or reasoning- or any argument type things. The next time there’s a piece of science equipment that can potentially kill one of us the one of who doesn’t have-” Tim’s face tightened in the way it did when he thought about Sherlock. John caught a face peering in at the slightly open door and made a motion for Tim to stop talking.

The man at the door was dressed in a dark pair of jeans and expensive looking sweater thing that gave him a very mobile citizen of the world look, his dark cloud of hair springing around him like a halo. There was an immediate sort of attractiveness about him that was arresting, the presence of an action hero even leaning loosely between the door to the room and the door jamb. He grinned crookedly, his teeth a bright predatory white and snuck halfway through the door. “You owe me so much for this Auntie,” he said, voice curious and sharp.

Tim just crumpled, all the anger going out of him.

John wasn’t quite sure how to say _what is he doing here?_ without saying what is he doing here.

“I had to,” Tim said to John, anxiety erased and replaced with his command voice. “You needed more medical attention than I could give you on my own. And we couldn’t risk Grendel finding you.”

“You must be W,” Norton slid forward before Tim could even gather himself to stand and sprung away with John’s medical file in hand. “Hamish Dimmock. That’s a bit awful, but then I suppose he was panicked. He was all in a tizzy last night with that kid. Let’s see what we’ve got.” His eyebrows were lifted in a self-confident I do what I want way that was strangely familiar in John’s drugged up state.

“Godfrey,” Tim stood up quickly.

All of the frustration and the anger and the iron control curl and unfurled and climbed from the soles of his feet, up through John’s belly, spread netlike through the pain and coiled in his voice, _“Mr. Norton.”_

Mr. Norton paused and looked at John.

“Tim has had a very rough night. He would like to yell at me for a while, I’d rather he do it now while I’m reasonably high. Put down the file and come back when he’s done.”

Norton raised his eyebrows, snapped the file closed and dropped it into the cubby at the end of the bed and slipped out the door silently.

“That’ll mean trouble,” Tim said tightly.

“I was serious about you getting the shouting over while I’m still well-padded with medication,” John sighed, all the authority going out of him, leaving a smallish, rumpled man in a hospital bed.

“Oh yes of course, and I should. You knew just what to say didn’t you? I’ve been thinking, and you knew what to say to make me fold and you said it.”

“It’s a good thing I did, it didn’t exactly work.”

“You disappeared for a second,” Tim said tightly, swallowing, “but then you came back again. And you just sort of _burst_.” He swallowed again, looking away. “There was blood. And this wave of heat and… It scared me. I hadn’t been scared like that in a long time.”

“I’m sorry,” John said, voice low and shaky.

Tim looked at him, then away, hands on his hips. The very image of that DI John used to know. “I should still yell at you, but that would be too easy.”

“Oh, what then?” John asked.

The answering smile was almost evil, “Your doctor is awful curious about your wounds. He’d love to hear how you got them. I’ll go get him now.”

“That’s an awful risk isn’t it?” John asked.

“I’ve hacked into half a dozen government websites again while you were getting your beauty rest. I can pull in any authority I need to in order to back you up.”

“I’m drugged,” he gave Tim a powerful disapproving look. Despite that his brain was swirling excuses and reasons and things that would make sense to a medical mind. The way the sudden appearing of scrapes and scars might look. The way his gunshot wound would look, the trauma to the tissue, after it had suddenly burst into existence on his shoulder, dragged into existence by the passing of years and then closed up again unsteadily.

“You’re clever, you’re thinking of something already, I can tell. Can you remember to go by Hamish, Doctor Watson?”

John sighed, “At least someone will get some use out of the name.”

The doctor didn’t give them that much trouble. John disappointed Tim a little bit by skipping over the outlandish story and channeling his inner Mycroft. “While I thank you and the hospital for your assistance you will not be permitted to share information about my visit, or any information connected to me with anyone. My partner will have confidentiality agreements delivered to yourself and your staff sometime today. It is imperative that you avoid the consequences of breaking such agreement.”

“What consequences?” the French doctor asked carefully. 

John smiled.

Something must have made it through the morphine because the doctor swallowed.

“You don’t have to sign it of course, other… career opportunities will be provided elsewhere.”

“Is that a threat?” smart and with a backbone too. Trouble or a godsend, John wasn’t sure which yet. He shifted, so the pain jolted him awake.

“It’s an option, so you don’t have to feel pressured into anything.” He was, a bit, subtly frightening, laying in a hospital bed somewhere in France, looking at the doctor like he could crack him open and rifle through his insides. John tried to be a kind man, never saw the point in being rude, like that made someone powerful. But there’s too much at stake now.

“Mr. Dimmock said he was your brother.”

“Did he?” John raised his eyebrows.

Three hours later Tim had a zip folder with confidentiality agreements in it and one young doctor who had nervously wrung her hands and said in a half questioning voice and very bad French that she heard if she didn’t sign the confidentiality agreement she’s be relocated somewhere where no one could find her. Tim said he had answered in the affirmative and she had slid the paper work back toward him unsigned, not looking at him.

John had sleepily listened and then waved a sleepy hand at him in agreement.

Three hours later he was having morphine dreams on the way to Norton’s private yacht. He took a break in the evening, once they had arrived to try and find out what day it was, text Davey vaguely about some alterations and change his dressing. The wound was swollen and raw, looking a bit like he’d had someone go after him with a meat cleaver. Like he’d been shot, healed a bit, and then had someone rip the wound open for him again.

Norton stood with one hip against the door watching John do a one handed tango of ointment, bandaging and antibiotics. “Where’s the kid?”

Blinking, John looked up and looked him over.

“You know, small, blond, looked a bit like you, was sobbing last time I saw him.”

“Safe,” John said simply.

Norton just looked at him.

“I thought,” John closed his eyes. _I thought I could do this. I thought I could fix everything. I thought it would be okay._ “I thought lots of things. This part’s on me.”

“So you’re Auntie’s brother then? And the kid’s yours?”

“You’re clever, you know that?” John said shortly and pushed himself irritably to his feet. “I’m not feeling particularly chatty.”

“I don’t like to be bossed around,” Norton said in a dangerous feline sort of way.

“I would imagine not,” John’s voice went ragged and dark. “Caretaking type of personality. You like to be in control, be the authority. The power of knowing what everyone wants.” He counted out his pain pills, very much not wanting to talk to anyone. It doesn’t take long for Norton to take the hint. He does know what people want after all. The last thing he wants to seem is ungrateful, but he is really uncomfortable after stretching the time between pills, really unhappy about the gun not working as they expected and really, really displeased about trading one disadvantage for another.

He woke sometime later to the sound of Tim and Norton’s voices.

“He doesn’t even _look_ like you,” Norton wasn’t quite whispering.

“It’s complicated.”

“I don’t like his attitude. And I have had to dodge all sorts of ships that I do not want seeing what’s hiding in the walls.”

“You went in to bother him?” John smiled at the concern in his behalf.

“I was curious,” the wounded pride in Norton’s tone shouldn’t have been amusing, that could have been the drugs though.

“About what?”

“The kid!”

“Shh!” Tim hissed. “You didn’t think that through? Man suffering from gunshot wound and who knows what else separated from his son for the child’s own safety after he thought it would finally be done, everything fixed and-” There was a pause. John’s hands fisted in the sheets. “Hamish has been with John, been with me every step of the way and he took some enormous risks so I wouldn’t have to take them, so no one else would have to take them. And now it seems it was all for nothing. That and the ripped open wound in his shoulder would make him a bit edgy.”

There was a long pause. “I didn’t think. And I didn’t think what it must be like for you. You don’t talk about it, but it would take an idiot not to notice you lost-”

“I should bring him his tea,” Tim interrupted Norton abruptly. “He’ll be up soon and tea always makes him more malleable.”

Pain had always made John a bit angry when it was paired with uselessness, but Norton had done more than his share for them. He felt irritably guilty. When Tim opened the door he closed his eyes and lay still. He heard the expensive sound of Norton’s clothing shifting as he crossed his arm, heard the near silent brush of Tim’s boots going down the last step and across the soft carpeting in the cabin Norton had graciously given up for John’s use. Heard the soft two-step of his feet as he tried to find the best place to stand, heard him sit slowly and carefully on the edge of the bed, heard the bed creak as he leaned over to set the teacup on the bedside table with a wholesome, solid sound.

“I know you’re awake.”

Without bothering to act like he was waking up slowly, John opened his eyes and peered at the side of Tim’s face in the half dark. Let Tim take his hand.

“When you were younger,” Tim paused as he did when he was unsure of John’s reception of the facts. After a moment of thought he pressed the back of his hand to John’s forehead to feel of his temperature. “I know you wanted a sibling that liked you better. And I wanted you to know, that I’m glad you’re my brother too.”

“You loved your family. Growing up I mean.”

“I do.” His hand lingered. “But you’re always so kind to me, even when you make me want to strangle you a little. And you try to protect me. When do you take your next antibiotic?” the bed makes subtle sounds as Tim straightened. As Tim folded his hands in his lap.

“Not for a while yet.”

“Can you take something for the fever?”

John ran a drug chart in his head. It was much easier than it had been before, side effects and drugs not to mix lining up like obedient school children, dosage and usage. “I won’t need anything for a little while yet, but I can give you a list when we finally land.”

“I understand why you did what you did. Afterward I felt a bit manipulated, but if I could have figured out how I would have done the same thing for you. I was going to let you sleep through it, fix things while you were out.”

“I know.” John curled his right hand palm up on top of the covers. Tim took the peace offering without complaint.

“Even though it wouldn’t have worked,” he laughed, smiled down at John for a moment.

“So this professor walked into a pub with a jar full of eyeballs,” John said, if only to get the strain out from the corners of Tim’s smile.

Tim tilted his head slightly to the side, it was mostly a gesture he made when annoyed, but occasionally it came out when he thought John was being peculiar.

“’What are you doing!’ the barman said, ‘you can’t bring those in here! That’s disgusting!’

“So the professor said, ‘Can’t a professor have a drink with some of his pupils?’”

It took a few moments, laughter bubbling out of Tim in shocked little bursts, “That was - a terrible - joke.” Soon he was giggling, bent over their joining hand, John giggled with him in spurts, the vibration making his shoulder ache and stopping up his laughter until the sight of Tim became too much. After a little while John had to wiggle his hand loose. He didn’t particularly want to be touched for very long right now, but Tim only laughed, curled up on the edge of the bed.

“That was a terrible joke,” Tim finally repeated.

John looked at the line of his shoulders, they were finally relaxed.

 

**Some things have changed since you saw me last. – W**

**I imagine they have, I’ll reserve my obscenities for the souse when I take count of the damages. – BD**


	11. Chapter 11

It was altogether certain that whatever Davey had been expecting in the prearranged back alley late at night, a grumpy drugged man leaning heavily on the arm of Tim was not it. Everything was altered under the sweet weight of medication. He could feel the largeness of his pupils, the softness in his muscles, the wide soft space that seemed to loom between everything. Saw Bad Davey, a remarkable piece of master artisanry, stained glass steel and concrete polished up to look like fine china, with his tongue like a razor between his teeth. 

Different. It was different nearly being at Bad Davey’s height. Davey was young, had just stopped putting on height, about as tall as Mycroft, a good head above John. 

Looking, as well as being, the older man had somehow changed the way Davey appeared to John. Changed from a man John was fond of for giving him resources - and loaning him his brother - to a man for which he felt an enormous weight of fond annoyance at how far and hard Davey had pushed himself to become this safe and terrible creature. Very much John wanted to hold him, and adore him a little. If only because no one else seemed to notice how necessary it was. 

A moat of blood surrounded Davey, not to be crossed on pain of death. How lonely, a child and a heart shot up like Saint Sebastian trapped behind their own defenses.

Coiling, Davey snapped out question after question which John brushed away like snow on his eyelashes. The gentleness with which he was being treated almost seemed to frighten Davey, made the sinuous lines of his aggression take up the width of the back alley where they met as surely as if he’d been a brick wall. John was unworried. The places where he must press and pull were blindingly obvious, He arranged Davey’s reactions carefully away from panic, away from something that might hurt the precious boy, crime lord or not. Davey was of course wary, his mind skittering and spreading anxiously away from John’s gentle verbal pressure to stop and sit and listen.

They tussled a bit, John gentle and Davey ragged, fighting against the ring of John’s affection. His arms offered an embrace, restrained instead of twisted, braced instead of stabbed. It helped a great deal that John was drugged almost out of his head and feeling very little pain. It helped a great, great deal.

“Stop looking at me like that!” Davey growled, finally sounding his age.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re fond of me,” his teeth flashed in the yellow, yellow flypaper of the back alley street light. John had him pinned to the ground, sorry for the sticky rubbish.

“I’m John,” he said instead of _I_ am _fond of you._ It meant the same thing.

Davey gave him a look which properly demonstrated how that was so outlandish it boggled response.

“Can I do something?” Tim asked irritably with his hand on John’s gun. “Or shall I continue to stand here while you have your stitches ripped open?”

“I’ll sew myself back up later,” John could see ghost lines of Davey’s possibilities the same way he had seen Bailey’s and Roost’s and Mike’s and the members of Sherlock’s homeless network. The same way he had seen Harry’s as he watched her stumble in over his cereal bowl, stinking and sweaty with her makeup changing the shape of her young face and had said nothing. Tragedies and the eventual mortcloth of being forgotten. It didn’t take any brilliance to recognize someone with the potential to destroy themselves.

Mycroft could probably wax poetic about making himself impenetrable, harder than a stone. About not caring even while one worried constantly. But John didn’t want to, didn’t want to live as the sort of person who went hard to survive.

He wanted to kiss Davey’s forehead and clean the scrape on his cheek, but Davey didn’t know him yet. John’s heart tossed and turned irritably in his chest. Sorrowed after Davey’s big heart and sharp teeth, annoyed at all this wasted time when there was a Grendel to stop and a pair of idiot geniuses to save.

And…

And he was fond of Davey. He wanted to go back to that, to the being fond and the telling him not to smoke and the listening to Davey insist he didn’t care about Roost. He was also impatient and grumpy because of his arm, but that didn’t seem to change him much. John frowned down at Davey and tried to stare recognition into his skull. Davey frowned back, one hand snapped loose to trace the curvature of the side of John’s face. A moment passed.

“Davey,” he repeated, “It’s me, Johnny.”

Bad Davey watched suspiciously, but stopped fighting. “Let me see your back.”

“You’ll stab me in the kidney.”

“Let me see your back.”

Tim saw the acceptance first and his whole body rippled with annoyed outrage. “John, seriously? We don’t need him that much!”

“We’re not doing this because we need him.” Both accurate and inaccurate. Tim made a sound of annoyance, took a step forward and Davey curled up, arms under John’s, hands pressed to the arch of John’s back beneath his neck. It was a sort of hug, Davey’s head pressed beneath John’s chin. It was less a sign of affection and more a sign of aggression, _look what I can do you self-righteous souse,_ but John pressed a hand to the crown of Davey’s head and smoothed down the line of his back. Strange, it was very strange, out of proportion, but terribly familiar. A bit like meeting a childhood friend again and falling into old familiar habits. 

A terrible uncertain hiss of a gasp scrambled out from between Davey’s lips. A sound of recognition.

“Let me see your back. No damage to your organs.”

It was a better offer than most of the human race received from the crime lord.

“Alright,” John said and watched Tim stomp around unhappily beneath the smooth weight of pain medication. It was like a warm winter coat. There had been so much agony back and forth it was a relief.

He braced himself forward, adrenaline fizzling away, shoulder sending out webs of sharp agony. Behind him Tim sidled close, half crouched. Half leaning against a skip, Davey untucked his button up and rolled it and his vest up the line of his spine.

“I know it’s impossible,” John spoke slowly, he was aware of how dangerous it was to lean forward, defenseless while Davey curved, armed, over his bare back.

Davey traced the white bumps of scars from John’s father. “They’re in exactly the right places. And you flinch in exactly the right way.”

“I don’t flinch.”

“You do that the same way too.” Davey made a yelping, yipping, irritated sound, the sharpness of his fingers pressing against the new/old scars from John’s military service, from his time with Sherlock. The sharpness of his fingers pressed just before the nail, letting the threat hover against John’s skin. There was the sharp edge of his jaw against the flaring line of John’s trapezius. Clinically John ordered percentages in his head, muscle strain, medication, his mental and emotional reactions to the stress - he knew he got angry when he was on edge. Whether or not knowing what was coming would be helpful or not he didn’t know yet.

The underlying threat inherently present in Davey’s skeletal structure almost comforted John.

“I knew your face,” Davey whispered and dug his fingers into John’s back. Digging for a fistful of his latissimus dorsi, John thought absently and snarled back, bucking gently against the grip. “Idiot child,” Davey replied to the small motion of personal physical sovereignty. “You’re meant to take care of yourself. Develop a sense of self-preservation and all that.” He huffed a laugh like a rusty door against John’s back. “I need a smoke.”

“Davey,” John’s voice dipped, gently scolding.

Davey let out a ragged breath and John went tense, “Davey, come around here, come where I can see you.”

The response was a snarl and snapping teeth.

Each breath was weighed and measured, the heft of it. Something was wrong. John caught him and dragged him up kicking and growling, with the red-orange crown of his head tucked close. Davey drew a knife, a small cheerful thing, but didn’t do much more than brandish it petulantly before clinging to John’s front. “I’m supposed to take care of you. That’s what I do. Take care of things.”

“I know,” John compressed him. Pressed him tight, no light stroking signs of affection would be appreciated. Davey kicked one leg irritably at Tim’s face just to do something, despite John’s gentle sound of disapproval, more of a token protest than anything. 

“You’re hurt,” Davey finally said after going still for so long that John had almost thought he went to sleep.

“Apparently the cost of going from a small child to a small adult,” Tim interjected, tired of all these shenanigans.

“You don’t get to comment. You were supposed to protect him,” Davey snarled at Tim. Furious, but clearly not enough to leave his place curled up against John.

John knew he was a small man. That he wouldn’t be able to help being a small man – even though he was twice the size he had been before. Was possibly taller than Dimmock, it was hard to tell. Having a great lanky Bad Davey curled up against him made him feel a little more like a teddy bear than he would have preferred, but John indulged Davey in this sort of behavior so seldom it didn’t really bother him. It was harder for him to notice what other people had, that he was small in a way that a star was before it turned into a black hole. Perhaps Davey saw because Davey saw everything whether he wanted to or not. Whatever he saw made him grab a fist of John’s jacket and press his face to the space under his chin before finally shaking it off like an irritated cat and rising to his feet in an elegant twist, somehow lifting John up with him in the meantime.

“My feelings about being lifted,” John ground out in a dangerous monotone. “Have not changed at all.”

Laughing like John had said something hysterical Davey released the scowling doctor to adjust his suit coat, made a face at the state of himself, and stretched like he hadn’t a care in the world. “I want Roost. He’s on holiday soon. Go get him for me. When you get back you’ll tell me how this came to be, or a decent lie if you don’t mind, no Father Christmas sort of thing.”

“You have a lot of nerve.” Tim was pale and tight around the mouth. John shifted, shook his head. The uncertainly screamed across the line of Bad Davey’s shoulders, the grace of his back could be flailed open from all of the confused wrong footedness it revealed. The man needed a little time to sew himself shut again, and John needed a little time to lie down.

“Fine,” Tim threw his arms in the arm, “but when you’re shouting in your sleep and waking me up in a panic I’m not going to be nice about it.”

A low strike, John and Tim gave each other looks.

“You’re really going to just do what he tells you?” Tim asked, hands on hips.

Davey made a rude aggressive gesture in Tim’s direction that made John sigh. “I’m really going to help him with something he needs. And I’ve missed Roost.”

“I have work here still. We have work here. You wanted to find a position for Mademoiselle Dupin at St Bart’s.”

“That’s something you can do one your own,” John said carefully. Things were catching up to him a bit. “I’d like the boys where I can keep an eye on them.”

“I can get you a discreet ticket if you’d like,” Davey said from where he was fiddling with his phone.

“I’ll do it,” Tim sighed, getting out his phone. “I can make it untraceable.”

Before the two of them could devolve into a pissing contest John spoke up, “He’s like a ghost, he just slides in and out of systems.”

“What, you’re a computer genius now?” Davey lifted his eyebrows.

Tim rolled his eyes, then his shoulders, “No, I’m still the same old Tim, haven’t changed. I’ve just got some good hardware. Since you insist and are liable to sneak off and do things on your own whether I help you or not I’m setting you up on charter planes where you will be nursed to death if you’re not good and rest like you’re meant to do.”

“I don’t-” John started halfheartedly, but he really wanted a lie down and his weight in tea, so he didn’t complain.

 

He spent the next day living in a little hut of ice packs, drinking mugs of tea while watching episodes of QI on Tim’s laptop. That took a little wrangling as Tim was out of practice with them. He complained about how everything needed to just hurry up and modernize already, which was almost as good as Stephen Fry. “He’s in an absolutely brilliant move in about 2034. If we’re not dead by then I’m taking you to opening night before it gets too crowded to function.”

John appreciated the sentiment, but just made grabby hands for more tea.

“You wouldn’t be in this state if you didn’t feel the need to roll around in an alleyway almost getting killed by a psychopath. He is such a-”

“Tea,” John interrupted him. 

Tim made his pug face but handed over the tea, happy enough with the prospect of whinging to his heart’s content while John floated in the gentle arms of opiates and humourous panel shows. He woke John up in the evening to make him eat and to shove an antibiotic into his mouth.

“I’m really alright, I’m fine to travel tomorrow.” Getting used to someone who wanted to take care of him was a strange, but the pushy beleaguered way Tim went about it had him laying back and taking it.

“I know. It worries me you had less of a reaction to the fact you almost died, but other than that I’m starting to believe you’re the universe’s version of a petrol stain.”

“Pardon me,” John huffed in mock offense.

“I mean stain in the best way of course,” he patted John’s head. “I prefer you impossible to kill.” He was still gone when John woke up in the morning, although there was a cuppa waiting still warm on the bedside. It was understandable. Retrieving Roost was something John needed to do as John and he wasn’t going to make Tim like it just because they were family. And John thought they might enjoy a little break from each other. They’d been living in each other’s back pocket for months. Listening to each other’s insomnia and plotting the unfortunate demise of Dr. Grendel. 

But John belonged in London, and a lot of his time in London had to do with Davey and Roost. They were a part of his life and he wasn’t going to exclude them from his life for the purpose of cementing bonds of misery. 

It took a moment to feel enough like the living again to find his phone and send Davey a few texts, **I need the address. –W**

**You’re bossy when you first wake up. –BD**

**My dearest darling, won’t you pretty, pretty please ever so kindly send me the address. –W**

**Look who’s mastered the sass, sassmaster. –BD**

Roost had been undoubtedly sent to a public school, Davey wouldn’t send Roost anywhere else, and following his track record it would be somewhere in the middle of nowhere Scotland where the students were only rich enough not to matter in the grand scheme of things. A buffer of bureaucrats and day traders so the very posh didn’t have to worry about getting to close to normal people. Before he could catch his plane he’d need a decent suit and paraphernalia. He should have done that yesterday instead of sleeping off his wrestling match. 

The sooner he was back to fighting shape the better.

**I’ll send you a file with all the important info. –BD**

**I’m sorry this is throwing you. I know it’s strange. – W**

**Just give me time, I don’t want to talk about it. – BD**

There was a pause in which John stumbled into the shower, tracked down clothes and tried to convince himself he was fully functioning. When he checked his phone again he had to swallow and make himself not respond right away with something comforting.

**I liked you better before. – BD**

**Mycroft came and talked to me. But only the once.**

**I didn’t tell him anything. Not his business.**

**I just don’t want to talk for a while. – BD**

Oh, his dear Davey. Awful, cursing, chain-smoking, impeccable Davey. It wasn’t that terrible to react strongly to someone changing so much. Wasn’t that strange to suffer when struggling with a sudden shift in power.

**It’s fine Davey. Don’t kill yourself with nicotine. –W**

 

Sherlock was working on a case that had to do with the mysterious deaths of fifteen actuaries in a bright little corner office space framed on all sides by floor to ceiling windows. The autopsy showed they'd all died from some sort of poison gas, as if he couldn't guess that from the rescue inhaler in the receptionist's hand. There were traces of the gas, something new, but boring as far as composition goes, in the air vents, but nothing that could show a source. No canisters, no packets or bottles or signs of a small bonfire. He would much rather be back at 221B trying to learn what the purpose of Irene's little manipulations were. But the Yard had been straining themselves over this for a week and if Sherlock didn’t leave the house Mycroft, for all his guilty distraction and rushing out to France, would come shoving his enormous head through the door to pry into Sherlock’s business.

There was something drawing about Irene, something inexplicable and intriguing. Something beautifully distracting. But Sherlock had been played by W, he had been so stupid, and lost so much. Irene for all her mystery had nothing on W's little games.

His phone suddenly went off. It was Mycroft. He ignored it.

“Sherlock,” Lestrade said in that annoying concerned tone he kept using.

It wasn’t like…

It wasn’t like…

Lestrade’s phone beeped and he sighed, allowing Sherlock to _do his job_. There was a moment and the annoying sound of him thinking. _Why couldn’t they all just let Sherlock think?_

“Mycroft said to tell you W is in London. Who’s W?”

Sherlock went very, very still.

 

**he’s just run off, sure you’ve noticed. Two of you doing ok? –GL**

**He’ll be heading in my direction. Nothing to be concerned about. – MH**

**There’s always something to be concerned about when you say there’s nothing to be concerned about. – GL**


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, edited by the one-two team of tentacle_love and Caroline. Hope you enjoy, I will be enjoying your shouts. (Not really, I'm actually kind of unassuming and have a tendency to feed people marshmallows, but I'm trying to have a more thrilling author persona.) Enjoy! My tumblr is thursdayplaid.tumblr.com!

The school was a big brownish sprawl, something decently Edwardian. There was already a row of expensive gleaming cars lined up in front like baubles on a too posh Christmas tree. “Go ahead and park somewhere,” John told the driver of his rented car. A sleek nondescript thing with dark windows that caught the soft Scottish drizzle, and an ex-Army driver to match. 

“Sir?”

“Not sure how long I’ll be and I’d hate for you to have to just wait. I’ll call you when I need you.” John’s suit coat felt heavy and secure where it rested over his sling, over his shoulders. He wasn’t used to wearing clothes this fine. He had tried to go for something simple and brown but the tailor Davey sent him to had received strict instructions to _turn Dr. Watson out properly_ and was terrified not to comply.

The suit made him feel strange; the dark, sharp blueness of it. Made him feel slightly dangerous. 

“You’re going to go in yourself?” The driver’s eyebrows were lifted in the mirror.

John’s head tilted slightly to the left, the _problem?_ left unsaid.

The driver immediately flustered, “It’s just that most parents don’t.”

“Yes, well,” John said as they came to a stop. “I’m fond of him. I’m not making him walk out here by himself.”

Head politely turned down, the driver appeared at his door with an umbrella. John wasn’t sure if that was extra or not, none of the other drivers seemed to be doing it. But then all the parents seemed to either be absent or loitering inside their cars. The anxiety coming off the driver made John tense up.

“Relax,” John told him, “it’s fine.”

“Just give me the call sir,” the driver almost saluted. He kept doing that, almost saluting John. He didn’t want him to, but he didn’t know how to make him stop. There was a quick dodge past herds of teenagers with giant trunks before he could make it to the office where a women with a dark tangle of hair was scrambling with paperwork. It was a relief, even with stress hovering around her like a cloud. All those children… They were so loud, their motivations, selfishness, vulnerability. So loud, _screaming…_

At least he had the morphine to dampen it. 

“I’m looking for someone,” he told her once she looked up.

“You and everyone else,” she muttered. John couldn’t help grinning at her. The last thing he needed right now was to try it on with a receptionist, but old habits die hard. She turned her head slightly, considering, appreciating the attention but not terribly interested as she rolled over to the filing cabinets. “The filing system here is absolutely archaic. I keep telling administration we need to upgrade to a database but I’m low on the budgetary list.” She seemed to suddenly realize she was sharing far too much information with a parent and shifted awkwardly in her chair, obviously giving herself a mental lecture in time with the whisper of the drawer opening.

“Don’t worry about it,” John tried to smile his charming, I’m-not-interested-in-you-sexually-I’m-just-friendly, trustworthy smile, “you’re obviously overworked.”

Her answering smile was less tense, “Who were you looking for again?”

John leaned back, his free hand in his pocket, “I’m looking for Rooster Watson.” 

She flipped through the file folders at a truly microscopic pace, distracted by the closing down, hurrying up going on in the depths of the office, and something else. Judging by the set of her shoulders and neck something that had happened recently. He tried very hard not to sigh.

“Sorry sir,” she flipped back and forth through a few folders. If she needed glasses she should go ahead and get them, if nothing else it would speed her up. “There’s no Rooster. There’s a Roger Watson…”

John licked his bottom lip, mentally sorting through the copies of the forms Davey had sent him through the drift of pain medicine, looking for the strange name Davey had used, “Sorry. Habit. His birth name’s Sherringford.”

Again her sorting dragged, her face shifted slightly, “I’m sorry sir, you are?”

“Dr. Watson,” his expression was hopefully something authoritative and nonthreatening, like when he was trying to get Sherlock to sleep. “Hamish Watson, I should be on his list.”

She looked at the folders, then up at him, then back at the folders again. The side of the file drawer rested against the skin of her calf. If the cabinet had been positioned better he’d be able to read the names himself. “Relationship?”

John tried not to sigh again; she was just doing her job, “Guardian. Roost lived with me until I had to leave the country on business. I’m fully aware of the instructions not to reveal any personal information. His brother David Watson brought him here after I had to leave, and should have called to put me on the list.” 

“We have that he’s to be taken to the train later today,” she said.

“David wasn’t certain I’d be able to return in time.” Nothing he had been saying was a lie, but it was certainly very carefully worded.

“It’s just you’re not the first man who showed up looking for him,” she bit her bottom lip, looking worried, but not sure how much she should say.

“Tall or short?” panic flared up inside John, if Grendel had come anywhere near Roost he was going to think of something horrible and do it slowly. He knew Grendel despised him, was willing to chase him to the ends of the earth if he could find him. . .

But Roost was - Roost and Davey were just _off limits._ Something crystallized in the back of John’s mind. He’d rather not, but then it might be for the best.

“Short, Irish, nervous. We told him there was no one here by that name of course.”

Moriarty wasn’t any better, but less likely to have a psychotic break and murder John’s darling in front of everyone. “I’d like to know where his room is now please,” John smiled tightly. The previous almost flirtation was gone.

He took the square of paper she offered him, tried to look less like he was plotting the murder of _dear Jim_ and left before his normal reassuring sort of face dissolved.

When he got to Roost’s room, most of the hall was deserted, only two doors remained with lights on. And there was Roost, a few inches taller, face fuller, fingers tapping against the page of a book he was jostling on his bouncing knees. His trunk was packed, the room bare but for the young man. It was a scene painfully resigned in its loneliness. John must have made some sort of sound because Roost’s head snapped up going rabbit still at being startled.

“I-” he should have thought of something to say, something to do to introduce himself.

“I know you,” Roost said suddenly in a soft sort of wonder.

“I-” John blinked.

“I know you, you’re my friend!” he sprang off the bed, bouncing on the balls of his feet. His hands fluttered up to rest on John’s cheeks.

Trying to move as little as possible, John lifted his free hand to rest his fingertips against the back of Roost’s delicate hand, shivering with vibrancy. “I am.”

“Oh, it’s so good to see you. It’s good. I’ve only the one friend, everyone else just burned away, it’s all thunder and lightning inside. Everyone else left me. But Davey. Davey always holds tight.”

John’s relief was starting to tilt into worry. “Roost, you know who I am right?”

His hands flustered away from John’s face like shy children to flit against his chin.

“It’s John. I’m John.”

“Yes,” Roost said, backing up, face jerking away. “Yes, of course.”

“Roost,” John said gently. He was supposed to have been doing better, supposed to be able to focus, not shatter apart. “I know I look different-”

“No,” Roost said softly. “No, you don’t. I- I’m okay,” he worried his hands. “I’m okay. I knew I loved you when I saw you. You were always so nice. You never thought I was broken. Both times, all the time and Davey was so thankful that you were so patient even though… Even though…”

“You’re not-”

In a quick movement Roost slid forward, a tiny vulnerable movement to cling to John, narrow hands catching fistfuls of John’s suit coat. He pressed his narrow head under John’s chin, the height difference made it awkward, but the bird bone delicacy of his frame trembled. “Are you okay darling?”

“I missed you,” Roost spoke softly.

“Are you-”

“Yeah,” he sighed under John’s chin. “I was just lonely.”

Swallowing, John tried to think of something else to say, something that wouldn’t get him all sentimental. “Look at you! Soon you’ll be taller than me.”

Peering up to look at John, Roost rolled his eyes, “I’ve always been taller than you.”

“Cheek!” John declared much to Roost’s amusement. “Are you all packed then?”

With a twitch and tremble, Roost climbed from floor to mattress to bedpost where he balanced in elegant curvature, like calligraphy. “Yes. Those are all my things. Clothes and all the other things. The stuff. You got hurt, I’ll carry it.”

“I can fetch someone,” John spoke up.

“No,” Roost balanced across the footboard. “I’m tired of other people. They’re too quiet inside. Is Davey here?”

“No.” He paused, careful, “He’s still in London.”

The vibrant shift of Roost’s body went still, and for a moment John worried he would fall. “Is he okay, is he hurt too?”

“No.” John watched him carefully.

His face went still. After a moment Roost nodded, spread his arms and fell back to bounce in his bare mattress. “It’s alright.”

"Is that it then?" John couldn't help the tender curl of his lips, the gentle tilt of his head. He could see the softness that had taken over his face in the shy, surprised way Roost accepted affection. Important as it was to keep Sherlock and Roost separated in his mind to be fair to both of them, he couldn't help imagining the way the consulting detective looked out of the corner of his eye when John grew fond at his peculiarity. 

"Oh yes," Roost said, sitting up to bounce gently on the bed a couple times. "That's it, my room."

"It's lovely, I hope you enjoyed yourself?"

“Yes.” After a moment of thought he jumped off the bed and tilted his trunk up to drag. “I didn’t like the writing stuff. The professor kept making me talk about stuff and I don’t like to have to sit still.”

“No,” John grinned, “I wouldn’t think so.”

Grinning back, Roost rolled his trunk out after him. They walked side by side, Roost kept leaning close before drifting away as if afraid to be turned away.

“Can I hold your hand?” Roost asked, eyes flitting over every- and anything.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t you be allowed?” John tilted his head, watching the vulnerable tilt of Roost’s head, the overly-studied nonchalance that Roost had always made so endearing.

“Bad Davey doesn’t let me,” he made a thoughtful little face. It was too old for his years. It made Roost’s years going mad on the back corners of London impossible to forget. “He doesn’t want me to get too close to him in case he dies.” His features rearranged into pained confliction. 

John offered his hand palm up; Roost made a soft sound and interlaced their fingers tight together. Thoughtfully John looked down at him; Roost wasn’t the best judge of people. But he knew his brother. 

The brothers were peculiar creatures. They burn and burn and never stop. Bad Davey was able to subjugate his brain with nicotine and violence, but it was only recently Roost had found the overlying latticework of the human body. He still remembered too well how much respite could be longed for like the worrying of an absent tooth. It was the sort of deduction that Sherlock could make in his sleep that Roost would fervently, painfully recognize how much living might scrape Bad Davey raw, how his intellect wouldn’t necessarily make him suicidal but might make one open to death as a way of just _shutting it off for five seconds._

That was a terrible burden for a child to carry. The fear their only family might leave them at any time and not knowing whether to feel secondhand relief or to cry at being utterly alone. John squeezed Roost’s hand tightly. John himself had wished Sherlock in the midst of one of his boredom fugues weren’t quite so clever if only so he wouldn’t feel the world grating against him so. 

And so he’d stop making such a sulky mess swanning around 221B.

“I don’t think he would be too pleased to go.” Gently John rubbed his thumb against the curvature of Roost’s knuckles. “He would miss you terribly.”

“Really?”

“Roost,” John said sternly. “Don’t. Davey would miss you much more than he’d ever want his brain to be quiet.”

Eyes large Roost blinked up at John, he was silent for a moment before nodding shakily, pressing his face to John’s good shoulder. “Okay. Okay.” 

John pressed a kiss to the crown of Roost’s head. “None of that Roost. Let’s go home.”

There was so much focus at the front gate to get the right child to the right Rolls Royce that Roost and John made it down the steps undisturbed. With Roost at his side chatting merrily away about the joys of chemistry, and clinging to his hand like he might disappear at any moment, John awkwardly texted the driver with the hand sticking out of his sling.

“Gun shot?” Roost asked suddenly, eyes on John’s shoulder.

Looking at him carefully to judge his reaction, John made a gentle sound of affirmation.

“Hmm,” Roost agreed. “Not too recent. It’s infected, but you’re not on bed rest like you’re meant to be. I should be annoyed with you because I’m going to be a doctor,” Roost informed him with great solemnity. “But no one who was meant to be on bed rest has ever come for me before so I won’t.”

It would be a horrific thing to do to laugh so John bit down on his smile and resisted embarrassing Roost by kissing him on the forehead again while they were surrounded by all Roost’s schoolmates. There was a familiar flash of pale skin and dark hair out of the corner of John’s eye. When he turned to look there was only a crowd, nothing out of place. Still, “Hurry up Rooster, to the car there.” He pointed where the driver was pulling up.

“You won’t leave without saying goodbye again?”

“Darling-” John started before a small pale hand darted toward Roost. It was the work of a moment to have his hand free and latch onto the offending wrist. He froze, freezing and burning with the sudden wave of absolute rage.

“Hello,” Moriarty said, smiling tentatively.

“Roost,” John spoke, surprised at his level tone. “Go to the car immediately.”

“I’m Jim,” Moriarty started. “Jim Moriarty.”

“You don’t touch him,” John snarled, threat vibrating out from the center of his chest and down his arm to shake Moriarty’s eyes dazed and his face wonderstruck. “You don’t ever touch him, you don’t think about touching him.”

Moriarty smiled, simpered, and tried to half sidle closer, “Oh how you thunder. Your dear little son said you’d shoot me. But you still owe me the bullet. You don’t want to kill me. You’re lonely for someone clever, cleverer than-”

John broke Moriarty’s wrist with a sound like snapping wood, barely audible over the sound of voices, “I’ll pay you back later. Stay away from my boys.”

Gasping, flinching, Moriarty’s eyes fluttered closed on the banked rage in John’s expression, in something that disgusted John with its tangle between agony and rapture. “I saw you first,” Moriarty hissed between his teeth. “I know your face now, before Sherlock. I was here first. And I know your weak point, where you’re soft. You know what I’m capable of doing.”

A shot of fear struck beneath the rage. He did know. And, oh, how John wanted to break his neck. There would be other times. Killing him here would be a horrible idea. Primary among the reasons why, Roost had never seen him kill before. He struck with words deeper than a bullet could burn, it was a simple addition of the desperation behind Moriarty’s eyes, how desperate he was. A man fighting for his life. “How can you be so very close to clever and still be so ignorant? You may be eager to end your monotony of a life, but Sherlock will refuse to die with you.”

Moriarty flinched again, mind treading water desperately to try and get back on some sort of solid ground. “You _are_ magnificent. You’ll see, I’m better than him. You’ll see. I’ll prove it.”

John turned on his heel, leaving Moriarty and his manic grin behind. The madman had meant it. 

He needed to get back to London.

 

 

Mycroft was displeased. For one thing W was disappointing. Over his texts he had sounded authoritative and bitingly witty. But in person he bore a mulish expression that was not at all attractive and a belligerent silence. He could read all the small things, that the man spent a great deal of time in France, America and Russia, that he was a recovering alcoholic, a father, a widower. That he loved coffee and typed often, that his clothes had been bought in a thrift shop in France and his boots were an unrecognized English brand.

But other than the man’s favourite blend of coffee, the fact he enjoyed paperbacks and hadn’t had lunch, there wasn’t much to see beyond that stubborn face. “You’re making this far more difficult for yourself than you need to.”

W just stared. _Puggishly._

“We’ve already had three hours of this. You know of course we can go for three hours more. I know you can tell how serious I am about this.”

Again, the staring.

“Sherlock is coming soon, perhaps I should have him talk to you.”

A flash of dislike and irritation. Interesting. 

Mycroft grinned and W’s face went stonier in response. Maybe he was making headway after all.

 

 

**Davey, call me immediately. Emergency. – W**

**3 missed calls from Adair**


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caroline and tentacle_love once again were my betas. A bit of emotional stuff and next week onto adventures. My eyes are working again and hopefully everything will return to schedule next week.

“Go over what happened with Tim one more time please,” John said between clenched teeth.

“Well,” Adair’s girding of his loins was audible over the phone. “Tim was captured by Mycroft’s men; he sent me a message beforehand and I was able to intercept his mobile. He also said- He also said to tell you,” Adair stopped and took a deep breath. “’Don’t be an idiot, I’ll be fine. It’ll keep me out of Grendel’s reach until you can get things settled.”

John started cursing and disparaging the Holmes brothers’ intelligence until Roost and the stewardess started to look seriously alarmed and he was torn between Adair’s accent getting increasingly thicker in one ear, comforting Roost and apologizing fervently to the stewardess. “I really am- one moment please Adair, can you just – sorry miss, my sincerest apologies. I didn’t see you standing there.”

“Hmm,” she hummed in the way of professionals everywhere judging the people who employed them, “Sir, will you please turn off your phone? I’m sure you can murder whomever you’d like once we arrive, but our pilots really must hear ATC without any added static. I’m sure you understand.”

“Keep a watch on him,” John ordered Adair. Although John wasn’t sure how he’d manage all this with the wedding, dealing with the sudden reappearance of Moriarty out of nowhere, and getting used to London again.

“Yes sir,” Adair said earnestly; his previous anxiousness seemed to have been replaced with a sturdy competence. A man who knew his business and went about it.

John smiled, “I know you will.”

The stewardess was in that sturdy breed of people unaffected by even the most annoyed of customers. He remembered himself and stopped his posturing, irritation was never an excuse; hardworking people deserved every ounce of respect they could get. Once his phone was off he handed it off to Roost to shove into his trouser pocket to be forgotten in favour of interlacing their fingers again and whispering conspiratorially, “He’ll be okay.”

“Sorry for the delay. We do appreciate the last minute flight.”

“Yes,” Roost added with great solemnity. “I’ve never been allowed on a plane before. It’s very exciting.” 

Before the young man could reveal that was because he had a tendency to become rather excitable, John thanked the stewardess. She was not so much dismissed as she dismissed them with a precise nod and a one point turn that would have done an officer proud. Once she was gone the counterintuitive urge to leap from the plane, rescue Tim and pour down vengeance was strong. Except Sherlock… he definitely deserved a decent dressing down, but he didn’t really deserve vengeance poured on his head. It might be good for Mycroft though…

One thing at a time. John took in a deep breath and released it. Roost rested his head on his shoulder quietly trumming softly, like an electric current beside him. It had been so long. The thrum of Roost, that had once been so much white noise, is new again and vibrating against his last thread pulled tight with the pain throbbing in the back of his mind and the worry and the weight of everything he can’t help seeing - what he pretends he doesn’t see. (Stewardess recently divorced, small child – affectionate and a little clingy going by her stockings. She’s still cooking for two and a half and learning to -) Too much, it was just too much, but the infinite unfairness of dumping all that worry on Roost when the young man was whispering _brilliant_ to himself as the plane prepped for takeoff.

He was just overwhelmed. He needed something else to concentrate on than the buzzing of a thousand people he had seen for a moment and would never see again. 

“Talk Roost.”

“What? Really?”

“Yes really.”

 _“Really_ really?”

John gave him a look. Brightening with a sweet pleasure Roost settled himself down and unfurled the electric highways of his mind, flitting and luminescent. It allowed John to lean back, close his eyes to do something like rest. The stewardess came with an impressive drinks cart half way through the recitation of the complete works of Rene Descartes. Roost got something for himself that was subtly fizzy and with more sugar than he should probably have. Unfortunately he gave a little too much freedom to Roost who spent the second half of their plane ride in a strange super-real state, large vaguely blue-green eyes fixed on John.

Once they landed John called Bad Davey, if only to divert Roost’s painfully sharp focus for a brief moment while he calculated the risk of heading back to his and Tim’s hotel room for gauze and morphine or just taking one of his emergency pills.

The call to Davey was a mistake. It started with an instinctive, “Tim’s in trouble. He was picked up by the Holmes brothers,” which devolved quickly into, “I have to go get him.” Then had a bit of Davey in the middle telling his baby brother, “Hey Roost, that means Johnny’s going to go away again.” It ended with Roost’s eyes gone large and limpid, his cupid’s bow of a mouth dropping at the corners in a frown, and most heart breaking of all the way he looked down and said in a very small voice, “Okay.”

John sighed. A jagged falter of a sigh. Barely audible under the deluge of guilt.

“Yeah,” Davey snapped. “That right. Besides, I know that souse, I bet you fifty quid what he told you.”

“I can’t leave him,” John said, “He wouldn’t leave me.”

“That’s because he’s stupid. And has got one of those obsessive martyr disorders. He will be on camera, and guarded. He’ll have to talk to the Holmes, but he can stand up under a little torture.”

Gathering Roost up in his arm, John tucked the boy’s head back under his chin and just held him there to wait out the shivering breaths making his narrow frame tremble. Roost wasn’t a small boy, but he was long and graceful in a way that made him look too thin and light. “I won’t thank you for upsetting Roost,” John said stubbornly to the phone on speaker on the tray table.

“Nor will I thank you for it.”

“I have a wedding to go to anyway,” John spoke carefully. Davey would recognize the gesture even if he was unable to acknowledge it.

There was a long stretch of silence on the other end of the line. A soft sound John couldn’t identify. “As if I care, I have better things to do than keep track of your diary.”

“Of course. Stuffing your face on cake is very trying.”

“I can see your maturity has increased by bounds with your height.”

Roost giggled into John’s collar, one hand resting for a moment over John’s heart before fluttering away. “You’re going to get fat Davey.”

“Oh excellent, it’s spreading,” Davey grumbled, amusement tumbling cartwheels beneath the eye rolling irritation and unspoken threat. But then Davey almost always sounded like he was threatening people.

The stewardess hovered nearby looking a bit read to have them off her plane, “Sirs? Your car has arrived.” The way she was tense (concerned, considering) John had a good idea who it was, the driver was probably scaring the ground crew

“Davey?” John asked the phone.

“That’s what’s-his-face, can’t have the two of you catching a cab, Roost’s trunk probably wouldn’t fit anyway. The driver’s a bit dead inside or whatever the kids are calling it these days. He shouldn’t be making any trouble, I told him to be good.” Davey sounded put out, like it was a burden anyone should make his life so tiring by interrupting his pulling people’s teeth out or making them piss their pants.

“Ooh,” Roost wriggled free, picking up the phone as he went, leaving all the boring grown up stuff to John. “Is he the one with the shadow puppets?” 

“Thank you for letting us wait inside,” John turned on the reassuring smile for the stewardess who’d been cautious as much as she had been attentive during their flight.

“Not a worry,” she was professional in a way that put a very effective wall between the two of them. John didn’t feel too bad for camping out for a little while in their plane, Tim had certainly paid enough to make use of their plane. 

John winced at the sudden jolt of pain in his shoulder, but didn’t reach for the pain pills in his inside pocket. “Everything’s been taken care of?”

“Yes sir, feel free to use our services again.”

He left her to whatever mysterious stewardess activities she had to do to get ready for the next flight, grinning on his way. As much as his shoulder was creeping in, he was happy to be back with Roost, happy to be back in London.  
"We're going to the wedding stuff!" Roost declared as soon as John was off the plane, orbiting him in enthusiastic ellipses.   
"Will it be too much for you Roost?"  
"Davey will be there and you'll be there and you love me and Davey doesn't want me to die which is practically the same thing. And I'll have cake!"  
John retrieved his phone before Roost could accidentally pitch it across the airfield. The shark faced driver was back, looking a bit like he had been dragged out of bed, whipped, dressed in Armani and sent off with instructions to be on his best behavior. Knowing Bad Davey that was actually rather likely. He wasn't so much at attention as at point, like a dog that had caught the scent of blood. His eyes were focused sharply over John's right shoulder, his body practically vibrating. "Sir," he said to the space over John's right shoulder.  
Roost had been fairly well-trained not to talk to the staff, or to pull on people, so he simply vibrated in place a few times before pressing his face to John's suit coat. "Dr. Watson!"  
"Rooster," John replied with a grin.  
"This is lovely."

The way the driver almost tucked him safely into the car ruined a bit of his good mood, he wasn’t a helpless.

“What’s your dosage?” Roost asked, suddenly the consummate professional. Impressive as it was, it struck John suddenly, stupidly, that Roost had grown up so much without him.

“Twenty.”

“Too low,” Roost tapped his fingers against his chin, thoughtful.

“I know, but I wasn’t going to sleep through picking you up.”

“Sentimental,” Roost smiled for a moment before his face went thoughtful again. “In total?”

“One hundred.”

“Too low,” Roost scowled at him. “Anything else?” 

“No, but I picked up some codeine, low dosage.”

“Stop,” Roost told him, one gentle finger tapping against the strap of John’s sling. “You think you have to be everything for everyone all the time. Pain is not just something to push through. When we get home I’m dosing you properly with Davey’s stuff. He won’t have it any other way, and neither will I. Until then you’re taking a pill. I’ll keep you from falling over. Tim will be fine, and Davey will be fine and I’ll be fine. You can rest now.”

John could feel his face crumple, no tears, he was too tired to cry. But he was tired.

Roost leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “You’re doing fine my dear Watson. Let Davey and I take care of you. He’s not just fond of you for my sake you know. Not anymore.”

“When did you grow up?”

The only reply was a beatific smile. John handed over his pills to Roost’s care. He couldn’t help smiling at Roost muttering about _European chemists._ He wasn’t entirely certain Roost was aware of the fact that Davey actually dealt drugs, as opposed to just selling and tracking a field medic’s dream medical supply. They were brought to the front of posh building of flats which the driver explained to an increasingly drowsy John was one of Bad Davey’s properties. Interlacing their arms, Roost thanked the driver with the over caffeinated grace of a head of state and escorted John to the elevator. It was sweet, the way Roost was taking so much pride in being thought of as adult. The pills really weren’t all that strong, but he was enjoying himself so much John couldn’t help indulging it.

Inside the building was a long stretch of cold and warm, wheat coloured marble and a burgundy and gold swirl of rugs, mirrors and the old sense memory of Victorian libraries in wood paneling. Just standing in the lobby made John feel chic and cool, a thing he had thought he had left behind after leaving his twenties for experienced and charming. What he knew about such things could probably make the world’s shortest book, but he had a feeling the place was so in style it would take a few years for the place to show up in the sort of art festival that catered to people who were wrapped in Burberry from birth with a side of Dolce for flavor. There were columns, a light wheat that barely flushed with gold, plain, geometric, that looked a bit like they should belong in some sort of temple to people who were so rich they were bored with money. 

Some sort of lobby person appeared to forestall them, but Roost just attacked him with what were either names of Eastern Bloc leaders or obscure scientific threats. John tsked, but not very hard. Finally the lobby person had to flee in confusion under the onslaught allowing Roost to waltz like a conquering hero to the elevator which was surprisingly old fashioned in design.

“Is the number plate enamel?” John asked. He could hear the drugged catch in his voice.

“The rich babies seem to like it almost as much as they like to give Davey their money. He needed someplace worthy of Elsie before she marries.”

The carpeting of the floor they emerged on was looking increasingly comfortable to sleep on, “How many properties does he hold?”

Shrugging Roost fiddled around his pocket for a beautiful key, glimmering and complicated. “That stuff is boring. I don’t like the money stuff. He just knows how to look at patterns. Davey likes to have enough for emergencies; it’s all hidden in different hidey holes.”

They entered a massive flat, open and airy, the entry table flooded with a cascade of flowers and a slack of presents and shopping bags. The flat must take up to close of an eighth of the floor, there was room for three or four apartments. There was a distinctly feminine flare that had John treading gently. They made a left at the large sitting room in light blue and into a short side hall where he could hear the soft, almost hesitant voice of Davey and the curling humour of Elsie’s voice.

“Hello,” John said drowsily. “We’ve arrived.”

Davey looked up from where he kneeling at Elsie’s feet, his fingers pale against the perfect curve of her heel. Elsie looked positively radiant, lips curled up at the corners in her usual good-natured smile. Instead of the usual glittering jewels of blue sequined dresses and ruby bright scarfs she was in a demure suit in a soft shade of jade. Clothing shouldn’t make that much of a change. There was still that balance of weight and humour about her eyes, sweet amusement in her tilted head. If she looked a little nervous, thoughtful and guarded, it was surely only because of the secrets she was preparing to fold away and hide for the rest of her life and the mountain of wedding preparation she had to survive this coming week.

“Hello,” Elsie spoke up first before giving him a steady look. “You’re a bit familiar.”

“I haven’t been gone that long,” Roost chirped and then crowed in pleasure. “Hurrah for summer!”   
"I don't want to disturb you," John said.   
The look on Davey's face when he’d been looking at Elsie, all his razor sharp edges gone soft and beatific, just about broke John’s heart. Embarrassing Davey twisted John's stomach up and he still didn't know how Davey wanted to deal with him, so he stayed back quietly while Roost bound in and kissed the crown of Elsie head. Watched her laugh in delight while Roost recited muscle groups like poetry to her.  
"Roost," Davey snarled, everything back in place. "Don't be a menace!"  
"Dr. Watson thinks I'm lovely! He's proud of me."  
With that easy predatory grace Davey rose to his feet with Elsie's broken shoe in one hand. The strap thing had split evenly, like it had caught on something. Davey turned it over in his hands, slowly coming closer to John. Even with his whole attention focused on the shoe.  
"Hello," John started, good hand in his pocket.  
"Hmm," Davey replied, standing close, almost a head taller than him. "Know much about ladies' heels?"  
"They go on ladies' feet?"  
"Ha," Davey said.  
"I think it's about done for unless you have a cobbler."  
“Can I speak to you real quick?” He still wasn’t looking at John.  
“I didn’t want to take you away from…” his eyes darted to Elsie and back.  
“No,” he shook his head, still not quite looking, “No, I want to talk to you.”  
“What?” Roost piped up and seemed to frolic a single frolic across the room to land by Davey’s side and try really hard not to throw his arms around his brother.  
It was possible John was a little high on pain medicine. He couldn’t wait for this to be over.  
“Baby Boy,” Davey slapped the back of Rooster’s head. It was like a slap given to a horse, not hard enough to smart, just sharp enough to grab its attention. Roost looked entirely unperturbed where he was standing, looking entirely too pleased with having all the people he liked so close together.

He looked up at Davey, his long fingers tapping something remarkably ordered against the inside of his left elbow, “What?”

“Go amuse Elsie, she hasn’t seen you in ages.”

He pointedly leaned so he wasn’t touching Davey by about a hair and grinned at John.

“No, I want to talk to John.” Davey told him. And then, remarkably, instead of shoving Roost away he tugged on one of the young man’s wild curls. Hard enough to make Roost wince and shiver, scrubbing at his scalp, but far from the violence Davey usually spared him. It made John go soft and sentimental.  
“Come on then,” Davey groused, latching arms with John and gently pulling him away to lean him against a wall. He’d been avoiding looking directly at John. There was an underlying fear crawling needle sharp up Davey’s back, something that made him stand straight and twitch. Davey's eyes stayed on the shoe. He leaned close, face turned in profile, "Does Elsie seem nervous to you?"  
Eyes flicking away to remember the details the young woman in question John considered, "Yes. Worried, preoccupied. But she seemed to have almost screwed her courage up."  
"Did," Davey swallowed. “Did she seem afraid of me?"  
"No," John looked back at him, blinked in shock. "No, not at all, of course not. She-" he almost said _she loves you,_ but he had no intention of hurting Davey.

It didn’t seem to do much good. Davey breathed out a pained sound, almost a whimper, knuckles white around the shoe. When John reached for him he shook his head, his laugh almost like a death rattle. “No. No. I’ll hurt you if I touch you. It’s how I’m made, how I made himself,” his voice quieted, disappeared into breath. “I can’t give her what she would need. I don’t… I don’t understand how it works. Even if I learned to fake it I’d slip up and I-”

Gently, John leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to Davey’s forehead. He was on John then, face pressed into John’s shoulder in muffled little sobs against the expensive suit he had paid for. 

“Self-righteous little brat-” Davey muttered. “You little – You little – I can’t stand your irritating sanctimonious little-“ They stayed that way for a long time, Davey clinging to him, sharp digging fingers and tight knots of anger, always that default anger. “Stop being nice to me.”

“Mmm,” John hummed drowsily. “No.”

“What’s this?” Davey pulled back with a speed that almost gave John vertigo. “Let me see your eyes.”

Complying good-naturedly with Davey’s professional analysis, John allowed his face to be tilted and considered, “You’re high! You’re high on someone else’s drugs!”

“I was shot Davey.”

“Hmm,” Davey look supremely perturbed at this. “That’s no excuse. I’m putting you to bed. You, a doctor and let me guess, no compresses, no antiinflamitories-“

“I’ve been taking antibiotics…”

Davey pressed the back of his hand against John’s forehead, “You’ve got a fever too! You are officially the second stupidest genius I know.”

“I am an adult you know, in all respects.” He kept repeating himself all the way to Elsie’s big fluffy guest bed where he fell asleep as soon as he hit the pillow.

 

**Don’t damage him before I get there. I can’t shake Irene. – SH**


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! On time and everything! The betas are tentacle_love and Caroline and my tumblr is thursdayplaid.tumblr.com. I know a lot of you have been fluttering about Sherlock and John reuniting, don't worry, it's happening next chapter, it just took a bit to set things up, I warned everyone things would be speeding up, and here they go.

The wait nearly killed Sherlock, nearly rattled him to pieces, nearly got him thrown out of the cab after tapping one too many times on the glass partition. He hated this. Hated, _hated,_ how helpless he felt; that he knew nothing, was stripped of all connection and he never would have known that Mycroft had him, how long Mycroft had to peel him apart, to find all the pieces before Sherlock even got a look at him. He needed to speak to him, needed to convince him-

He leapt out of the car without paying - there was no time to worry about it - and into the building that said on the outside _Farrow and Sons Accounting_ which apparently had quite the basement. Sherlock thinks for a moment he will have to puzzle his way in, kick down a door, or out-plot a secretary, but Mycroft appears at the end of a hall while the receptionist discreetly reaches for a gun.

“It’s quite alright Minerva,” Mycroft said calmly. He sounded like a mix of Mummy’s brainless Society friends and the condescending psychologists their parents insisted Sherlock see. “This way Sherlock please.”

There was a man just losing the sun bleach in his hair with his tongue between his teeth trying to navigate around a blackberry.

“Who is this?” Sherlock couldn’t help letting his derision show through.

“My current head assistant, Mr. Adair. He’s admittedly not much as far as handhelds go, but he has a great head for numbers. He has an excellent talent for calculating who’s cheating at cards and how badly, superbly helpful at the American ambassador’s cocktail party the other night,” Mycroft said lightly, as if Sherlock cared. “The assistant I was given after dear Anthea took her leave was a plant so after I had him shot I thought I should pick someone on my own. Mr. Adair has proved exceptional. To think he was going to be wasted in accounting. A bit pedestrian around the edges, but terribly useful.”

“I don’t care,” Sherlock snapped. “Is he here?”

“I don’t see much point in asking you to come otherwise. Now this has been a very trying day, and the gentleman in question is rather stubborn.”

“How long have you been working on him?”

“Just the day. I know what you think of me Sherlock, but I know how much this means to you. I wouldn’t rob you of the opportunity. He is not what I was expecting, and he’ll try to get you angry and lose your focus, but you mustn’t. That’s why I’m currently talking to you in a calm and soothing voice and trying to get you to look slightly less like you’re on the edge of psychotic breakdown.”

How he wanted to argue, wanted to shout, but Mycroft was right. That may have made it worse, but Sherlock endured. Found a chair in the dummy office and took deep breaths until he felt slightly less like crawling out of his skin.

“Alright,” he finally said, standing up. His hand went automatically out for John before remembering that John wasn’t here. The whole reason Sherlock had run all the way here during a frankly fascinating discussion with Irene about willpower was that _John wasn’t there._ Mycroft saw but pretended not to have. Mr. Adair just looked like a frustrated sheep, still battling his blackberry.

Sherlock knew what he was going to ask, what he was going to do, how he was going to do it. Start at the bottom and work his way up, thoughtful perceptive questions. He kept telling himself that as he was x-rayed, scanned and finally released into a white hall, bright and over lit.

Mycroft’s hand fell gentle on his shoulder, “Sherlock, he’s not what you’re expecting. Whatever you think he will be like, be careful. If you can’t get him to say anything don’t worry too much. I have a special team to come and work with him for a while.”

“You mean torture?” Sherlock hissed. “That could-”

“Nothing so indelicate would work with him,” Mycroft sighed. “He seems to be the type who has built up an exceptional resistance to physical pain through suffering. It’s more likely that exposure to you will be more useful. Still. You’ll be allowed back in at the end of his… convincing, so try not to show all your cards at once.”

He remembered the pictures, the video feed, remembered the interviews. _He was a good bloke, good listener. I think he had kids. Said something about knowing what it’s like with little ones._ When the door opened to the square concrete room with its obvious two way mirror at W’s back, Sherlock could see himself in the glass; he tried not to become distracted. W is small, stocky, although a bit thin, his eyes are disapproving, angry. Pale skin, more likely to burn than to tan. Stress had started to carve out twin lines on his forehead, a notch between his eyes by looking sullen. Still, there was something boyish about his face, something that made him look younger then he was. His arms were both restrained, which he didn’t seem to be enjoying if the way he kept fisting and twisting his hands around was any indication. “Hello W, it’s very nice to finally meet you,” Sherlock started, hands behind his back, taking slow circling steps. “You wouldn’t be willing to share where you’re keeping John Watson, would you?”

W’s face was perfectly blank. 

“That’s what I thought. I feel like I should mention talking to me will be far more enjoyable compared to what will happen once I leave and my brother’s interrogation team comes.” 

The response may have been a little more thoughtful around the edges, but still the stonewalling continued. Through an hour and a half of Sherlock questioning him he stayed resolute, face pulled in mocking lines. He seemed to flinch sometimes, but never said a word, did nothing that was too telling. There was no point in talking until he went hoarse. Crouching down he started the careful examination. Professionalism, not sentiment, ruled Sherlock. All there was was the work; he would make careful notes and not worry about the way W was staring him down.

Clothing: Old worn in boots, worn at one point by someone with knees bad enough to effect the wear on the sole, brand unknown, factory not cobbler. Sherlock tried to kneel down and examine W’s boots, and W tried to kick Sherlock in the face.

Jeans, secondhand, bought in Germany… no, France. They had been previous owned by someone who did a lot of walking. There had probably been a mobile and wallet, but those were obviously missing. Jumper, also second hand, same store, coffee stain on the sleeve. When he sensed he was being followed he had a cup of coffee in one hand, not terribly good quality based on the stain, so somewhere professional where the employee had to work long hours.

“Where are his mobile and wallet?” Sherlock asked Mycroft. There was absolutely nothing wrong with his voice, it was perfectly level.

“If he had them, he dumped them. They weren’t on him when we captured him.”

Hands he could do later, once W stopped clenching them. He inhaled in W’s hair from above; it was better than looking at him, at that sullen derision that _screamed_. Sherlock clenched his hands tight to still them. 

No product, just wash and dry – W’s hair was short enough to pull it off. Just a bit of a sign he had tinted his hair lighter toward ginger sometime in the previous few months and the smell of shampoo. Not strictly speaking a commercial brand, a hotel then. Back in London and has not other place to stay, possibly in disguise.

“Hotel, I know which one, I just can’t remember,” Sherlock said, at W’s side where he was less likely to be head butted. “Once I can narrow it down we should be able to find where he’s been staying in London.”

“Yes, you always were good at that sort of thing,” W said suddenly and rapidly got the attention of both Holmes brothers. “I heard you wrote some sort of thing about ashes.”

“Yes,” Sherlock brightened up. “Have you read it?”

W’s body shook once, powerfully, as he snorted in derision, “Seriously? Of course not. I have better things to do with my time.”

“Whether or not that’s true is beside the point-” Mycroft tried to say, but W interrupted him.

“But then that was always more important to you wasn’t it? More important than people who needed you, someone who always put you above his own happiness. And the first moment you could launch him off to the wolves you just threw him out. Bet you got a lot more done then.”

“It was for his own safety.”

“That’s what your type always says,” there was so much disappointment, disapproval, in the way he was eying Sherlock up.

Sherlock lifted his hand to strike him, he couldn’t… he couldn’t quite…

“You can’t can you? But then you never follow through, you’re such a _disappointment_ ”

That was enough, Sherlock leapt forward, snarling, hands up to do _something_ , he wasn’t sure what yet. Then W’s hands were free and W had taken him down to the floor in a flurry and a shout. Sweat slipped against his fingers as he tried to hold W down. The floor was concrete, there was a _wwwwisk_ as Sherlock’s jacket slid back across it. It was hard and jarring against his shoulders, with W, even stress thinned, landing on him like a wild animal so that he had to try and catch his breath again. Scrambling, Sherlock’s fingertips rolled quickly over scars that felt like braille up W’s side, but was too busy shouting out what could have been betrayal to notice.

Fists full a Sherlock’s jacket, W tried to bang his head back against the concrete floor, but Sherlock used his superior leg length to flip them over, making sure every sharp angle landed on his opponent. Sherlock was screaming things and digging his fingers into whatever bit of flesh he could get his hands on and Tim was valiantly trying to break his ribs.

Mycroft was barking orders in the background while W hissed in his face, “I almost lost him, _my family_ -” Then he was gone, hefted off Sherlock by some of Mycroft’s giant members of security leaving blood to slide, sensual as a snail against his knuckles, across his face.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Mycroft said, holding out a hand. He hated, with all his heart, how kind Mycroft sounded.

“I’m fine,” Sherlock snarled, leaping to his feet, scrubbing at the blood. “I’ll find the hotel they were staying at call you back.”

“Sherlock,” Mycroft began in the attitude of someone who knew they might get hit. “John may not be there.”

After a long moment of staring at his brother, Sherlock turned on his heel and left. There was nothing for him here.

It took cleaning the blood off his face and his best _not a freak_ smile to find the place. It was the fourth location with matching artificial plants and teenaged desk attendants as all the others. He flashed her Lestrade’s badge and told her some story and then – finally, finally – he had a room number and was running for the stairs. The elevator was slow, far too slow. There were a couple of guests _in his way_ but they got out of his way fast enough when they saw him coming. And there, at the end of the hall was the room with the door open and a housekeeping cart nearby. Sherlock’s heart froze in horror.

“What are you doing?” he shrieked at the housekeeper, carrying out an armful of linens.

The housekeeper just stood there, staring at him. The idiot! Couldn’t he see what he was destroying while Sherlock was forced to look on in horror?

“Put everything down!” When they kept standing there, stupidly, he pulled out the badge he filched off Lestrade. “This is police business. Put everything back in the room, don’t touch anything else.”

“You can’t just-” the housekeeper started.

Sherlock just looked him up and down, “I can do a lot of things. I don’t suggest you test me.”

He seized one of the pillows off the top of the pile and held it close. He would have loved to go over it with his magnifying glass, but it would have been too awkward. There! Hair, right length, wrong color for W. Yes, _yes_ , finally yes. “Where did you get this?”

“From that room,” the housekeeper swallowed. He was boring, boring, nothing to do with anything but a possible addiction to cats. “With the open door, room 314. Was it drugs?”

“Stop talking. According to the front desk this room has been rented for three days. Have you worked those three days and if so did you see anyone coming in or out?”

He just stared at Sherlock.

“You can answer the question now if you’d like,” Sherlock wished he had the time to make it slow and biting, but he’s too distracted because _there are hairs on the pillow_ and they weren’t the reddish-brown of W.

“This is always my floor, but there was a do not disturb sign on the door. It’s against policy to enter when the sign’s up. But they asked for an extra ice bucket. And the bags that go in them.”

“Ice? What would he want with ice?” He darted into the room and shut the door behind him before the housekeeper could answer. He just had to look, observe, _think_. Carefully, he unfolded the linens on the half-made bed into some kind of order and gingerly set the pillow down on top.

Blond hairs. Short, almost military short. Coarser, not the silky softness of a child’s hair. No, too soon, it was never good to guess too soon. He carefully plucked each one and dropped them in an evidence bag. Housekeeping had destroyed the shape of who had been lying there. Couldn’t measure height or breadth. Mentally he measured his own height against the length of the bed. He’d fit alright, even better with his legs bent, so no guess about height. 

Checked the bedside table drawer next, obvious. Once he saw what was inside he froze. Morphine - he’d recognize it anywhere, and a small parcel. Why would W use morphine? That couldn’t- That didn’t fit anything to do with John. Inside the parcel were the syringes contained with military neatness. Gauze and tape, needle and thread, a folded up piece of stationary. Sherlock opened it and had to sit down. He knew this writing, it was painfully familiar. John. John had written this. Instructions on dosage, how to administer, absolute limits of medication. There wasn’t any notation about what it was for, why the mysterious blond would need gauze and morphine and worst case scenarios. 

And then it was obvious.

Timothy whomever-he-was was in France with John, and then came back to England with someone else, another blond who was injured, injured enough he could possibly have a hard time taking care of himself. Seriously injured, in a lot of pain, enough so he might be compromised in a mixture of misery and medication for long periods of time. Certainly unable to take care of a child. But a blond. He couldn’t smell any product on the pillow, just the light ghosting scent of sweat barely there under the stark smell of hotel laundry detergent. The sheets were turned and examined, nothing new. There was one bed, but with the blond injured it was unlikely they shared. 

And that meant W wasn’t W at all. W was somewhere, _possibly bleeding out_ while W Tim was snarling at him.

Abandoning the billowing piles of linens, Sherlock turned on the lamp above the wingback chair. There. Short Tim coloured hairs. He plucked them all up into another bag. So they weren’t sharing a bed, didn’t mean anything. Didn’t necessarily mean anything if they did.

Next he attacked the drawers, top one full of not-W’s things, boring, unimportant. Second drawer…

Second drawer…

Jumpers, one was blue the other oatmeal coloured. They were adult sized, but still the breath stuttered in Sherlock’s lungs, stretching and pressing until he felt like they were pressing against the barrier of his ribs. Those jumpers. Soft, expensive, too understated to be a large designer, but certainly bought in a boutique. The jeans were new too, never been worn, just two pair, both only a small step down from the quality of the jumper. Plain dark denim, no distressing or overt or covert ornamentation. But then the pants were plain, from Primark, so the individual – or whoever was close enough to him to buy pants for him – knew he was a simple individual. Painfully simple. Whoever had the money to buy the rest of this though had disapproved of his Primark ways.

He had found W. Well his clothes.

Reaching in his pocket for his mobile he lifted one of the two jumpers to examine it more closely. It was smaller than he was expecting, in the length of the arms, but exceptionally… cuddly. If John were much larger it was the sort of thing Sherlock would have tried to force him to wear instead of his mend and make do clothes. The fingers in his pocket were less lucky. There was nothing there, no mobile at all. He checked his other inside pocket, his trouser pockets, coat pockets, inside coat pockets. His mobile was missing. That was impossible, he would have known if anyone picked his pocket, and the only people close enough were Mycroft’s little minions and-

“Oh Tim,” Sherlock snarled, “You little-“

 

 

**Text me back quickly. -T**

**I knicked Sherlock’s phone, just so you know. So don’t sign you’re texts. -T**

**This isn’t Sherlock, by the way. -T**

**Who pray tell is it then?**

**Who are you? - T**

**I asked you first.**

**Is that you Davey? –T**

**No.**

**The other one then. You’re worse that the Holmeses. –T**

**Soryr about taht. It’s me. The bous drugged me s I couldn’t rescue you.**

**Are you alright? -T**

**Judt fine, still groggy. Are you arlight? How’s Sherlock? Does he look like he’s getting enough sleep?**

**Stop fretting. Everything’s fine. Except I’m lost. –T**

**How did you get away?**

**Sherlock’s phone has wifi access. Easy to enter the security system. Everything’s done by computers now. – T**

**Lovvly, I’ll come get you.**

**Are you fit to stand up? –T**

**Don’t be a judging judge.r D ha drivers. Just need a shower nad to walk it off.**

**Don’t try to walk it off. Go back to bed. –T**

**Did you know that an octopus only have one bone in their entire body?**

**Excellent, you again. - T**


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the chapter you've all been waiting for. Things are going to get increasingly dramatic after this, there may be some low grade tears. This is the longest chapter of Bantam Wars, and I hope you enjoy it! Betas are Caroline and tentacle_love. Hope you enjoy!

“Let’s just do it!” a man’s voice made John look up from writing a quick note to Roost. He signed it quickly and safety pinned it to Roost’s shirt. The boy had crashed from his sugar high spectacularly, curled up on Elsie’s guest bed, still clasping Davey’s personal phone. If the boy didn’t notice it himself someone would notice for him. The boys drugging him could have made him furious, maybe should make him furious. It didn’t, it makes him sigh with the weight of his patience. He’ll have a decent scold with Davey later and talk to Roost very gently about not drugging people, even if it’s for their own good.

The man was still speaking loudly enough to indicate he was rather excited, but not quite enough to be perfectly audible. Even after the shower John felt the weight of the medication, his attention stretched, his mind slowed and fuzzy. His stubbornness remained intact however. He needed to leave now while he was awake.

“Are you really sure?” Elsie’s voice lead John through the peculiarly cozy white hall leading to Elsie’s large living room. She must stand out against the white walls, like a sweet rapturously glazed.

Trundling around the corner, John took in the three of them. Elsie looking less euphoric with love and more of that steady, settled adoration in the absolute. The man next to her was taller by a good amount. Height didn’t seem to make the man loom, as if he deserved all the space he could get. His shoulders had the gentle slope of a bear, or a large dog. His large limbs moved with a guileless simplicity, as did his expression.

“Let’s just get married!” the man said, definitely Hilton then, if John didn’t already have enough proof of that.

“You are, in a week,” Davey said in his shamming normal voice from where he was giving the couple their space. Body tilted just so, he seemed to define a space around them that no one should cross, by the way he decidedly didn’t pass beyond a certain point, subtly leaning forward.

“No,” there was a half laugh, relief mixed well with happiness. “I mean soon, in the next few days, everything is ready but the cake, everyone important is in for the party tonight. Neither of us are prize animals for my family to show off to society. Let’s just do it.”

“I-” Elsie said.

John thought it was about time he revealed himself. He cleared his throat in the doorway of the kitchen.

“Sorry,” Davey said quickly. “My father, Dr. Hamish Watson. Dad you know Elsie and this is Hilton Cubitt.”

It was for the best Hilton was distracted by Elsie’s sudden confused change of expression because John wasn’t entirely sure what his own face was doing. 

“Dr. Watson,” Cubitt said, hand out but attention mostly on his fiancé. “You have a fine son, he’s my best mate. I couldn’t have survived the wedding planning without him.”

John smiled and shook his hand. “He’s a very thoughtful man. I’m even more proud to know him every day. But I should probably leave and let you lot take care of this.”

“I would have expected you to be a bit taller,” Hilton said and instantly began to stutter an apology at the compression of the lines of John’s face.

“I’m not that short,” John said, free hand resting absently under his sling. “It’s just that everyone around me is a giant.” Hilton snorted in amusement and then looked horrified at having done so, not sure if it was meant to be a joke or not.

“We’re more mishpocha than anything,” Davey said quickly beginning to usher John toward the door. “It’s a complicated family.”

“We’re going to talk later about drugging people for the purpose of getting them to do what you want,” John said with a pointed nonchalance once they were far enough away for the love birds to be tangled up in each other again.

“Your survival record is horrific, and you should still be in bed. What are you doing all showered and dressed? Roost was meant to run interference.”

“He became distracted texting Tim animal facts and fell asleep. His texting’s really improved.” 

Davey made a face, “Tim’s escaped then?”

“You knew he was captured?” John lifted his eyebrows.

Holding his arms out, Davey expression seemed to indicate the magnificence of himself as a whole, “I’m Bad Davey. I know everything.”

John tugged on Davey’s ear, letting him _tch_ and frown in response. “I’ll need one of your drivers to go pick Tim up.”

“You can’t just take one of my drivers,” Davey groused, rubbing his ear.

“I’ll take a cab then, I have enough money. It’s no problem.”

Davey frowned fiercely, looked like he was about to threaten John before looking toward the kitchen where Elsie and Hilton’s voices were tumbling around each other. _I’ll kick you in the knee, manipulative little brat,_ he mouthed fervently while texting his driver.

Patting Davey on the shoulder, John smiled at him. “I really am quite proud of you, you know.”

Davey paused, mouth compressing and leaned forward to almost kiss John at the temple. “All this flattery,” he spoke very softly. “You’ll make me go soft. Now get out of here, I have a wedding to rearrange.”

“Wasn’t Hilton’s assistant…? Mr. whoever he is… arranging everything with the wedding planner?”

“He was,” Davey said irritably. “But he threw an unholy fit and got a bit shouty when Hilton started to tell him they were moving the wedding. Had some sort of breakdown, got terribly upset about _’interfering with the timetables.’_ Hilton came straight over, the assistant will get a giant bonus and some time off to recover and I’ll take over the arrangement. The driver’s coming up, don’t try to slip him.”

“I’m not actually trying to get killed,” John told him sharply. “I’m just trying to keep everyone else from dying. Stop fretting and go do your wedding things.”

Tilting up John’s chin, Davey checked his pupils, had a small think, then nodded, “Fine have the driver bring you back to my place afterward.”

The driver, John thought, took far too much care in escorting him down to the waiting car, using the delicacy of someone whose life depended on the security of the cargo they were moving. “I’m not actually helpless,” John groused at him from the back seat.

“Of course not Sir, but it’s too dangerous for me to act otherwise. Bad Davey is very particular.”

That was the end of it until they arrived at the warehouse Tim had holed himself up in. John would have liked to keep talking to keep himself awake (he wouldn’t be surprised if Davey ordered the driver to bring him back again if he fell asleep) but the man was so nervous around him that he doubted conversation would be that good.

“Please keep the car running, this shouldn’t take terribly long.”

“Are you sure Sir?”

John gave him a long steady look through the glass partition that sent the driver’s eyes, cold and watchful, away out the window. Whatever Bad Davey had told the driver about comportment around John, he had taken it to heart. The man was almost stiflingly deferential. Once out of the car John wished a little for assistance. The warehouse was dark; the windows a scramble of thick dust and spray paint. It took his good shoulder to the door to open it, rusty and creaking, and inside it smelled in excess of humanity – all sweat, pheromones and urine. There are walls up, blocking off the warehouse floor that John had no hope navigating with the baseline muzziness in his brain. It was lucky then, that before he could start wandering around in his one good suit that he heard the beeps from a phone coming from above. A tangle of wrought iron cat walks and platforms caught the sunlight coming from above and turned into a silhouette in the shape of Tim sitting on the edge with his legs dangling into space. It was obvious at some point there had been something like a second floor before parts of it had started falling off.

“Tim!” John shouted.

Tim just waved, which was not at all helpful. John sighed and carefully started up a stairway well bolted to the wall, at least that was unlikely to fall down.

“What are you doing Tim? We need to go.”

“What?” Tim shouted back.

John sighed and climbed a little farther up the stairs.

“We need to go,” John shouted back. These stairs were making him a bit dizzy.

“What?” Tim shouted again, he finally stood up at least. “They shot a lot of guns at me, and there was an alarm. My ears are still ringing a bit.”

One day John was going to kill Tim. He hurried up the rest of the stairs, carefully made his way through a small corner office filled with boxes of what looked like old socks and took a few steps out onto the cat walk. “My patience is just about gone right now. I’ve been pushed around and cosseted all week.”

“You almost died less than a week ago,” Tim said suddenly, voice a little too loud.

“I’m aware,” John snapped. “We need to go now, so stop loitering and let’s go.”

“Don’t push yourself too hard,” Tim said in his annoying;y calming voice. “I’ve just been interrogated and beat up by the Holmeses and you’re not well yet. There’s no reason to drive yourself too hard. Breathe for a moment.”

“That’s what you’ve been doing” John snapped at him, not yet pacified.

“No, I’ve been downloading annoying apps onto Sherlock’s phone.”

John moved forward quickly. The easier Tim could hear him the sooner he could get him moving. He stood at the junction of a large area of cat walk that circled a large circumference of the maze of the warehouse below, cut through the middle with two pathways about ten feet apart. Rubble had fallen on parts of the catwalk, blocking it off and making John decidedly nervous about the whole affair. Too much of the walkway was cast in dark shadows and sharp corners. “The phone the Holmes brothers are probably tracking?”

Tim waved him off, “They can’t track my phone.”

“I know they can’t track your phone, but you don’t have your phone. You’ve got Sherlock’s. The same phone that Sherlock’s older brother installed with a tracking device?”

Clarity made a sudden appearance on Tim’s face.

“Exactly. Now can you hurry please before this thing breaks and we fall to our deaths?”

There was a _bang_ from the other side of the warehouse and the sound of feet running up the stairs.

“Give me the phone,” John ordered. “And run, I’ll be right behind you, no arguing I’m serious. Bad Davey sent a driver with me, he’ll be waiting by the door.”

Tim gave him a puggish look, mostly because he was self-conscious about it not occurring to him and off he went. John, still feeling bone-heavy and sluggish, set down Sherlock’s phone on the cat walk and went to follow after his idiot brother. He could see it was Sherlock, would recognize the flap of that coat anywhere, but this wasn’t the time or the place. No matter how much he wanted to stay.

“Stop!” Sherlock screamed, a raw ripping thing that hooked into John’s spine and held him fast. He felt the visceral power of it, of a year not that long ago full of tea cups and wet alleyways and the pull of loneliness and not belonging. A word and the sound of frantic feet and John was still.

So much for iron will, he thought weakly to himself. 

“Stop,” Sherlock repeated, quieter, then made an awkward sound of frustration. They were on the two bisecting catwalks. Too far away to try and jump, even for Sherlock who he knew had a tendency to try and leap over everything. John looked over his shoulder at him, unable to keep his back to the man, turning just enough to really see him. The sudden wave of happiness made him waver, have to brace himself. Sherlock was leaning forward at the railing, looking like he was readying himself to make the jump. They were so close, close enough so that if not for the rubble the two of them would be face to face. Close enough to grab hold of each other’s shoulders and look at each other. The way Sherlock swallowed frantically was obvious, even in the poor light. The white around his pale eyes and the way his face, his limbs, flexed in panic and the visual measurement of the space between them.

“I’ve stopped,” John said quickly, holding up his one free hand. The last thing he wanted was Sherlock falling to his death. “Don’t be stupid.” His face, he knew, was still mostly in the dark, striped by grimy light and geometric shadows. 

“London,” Sherlock breathed, mouth falling faintly open. His face was like a flock of white birds who hadn’t decided whether to fly together or not. It was nearly impossible to track the quick flashes of emotion chasing each other on his almost frightened little boy face. “Central London. Is that your real accent?”

“Close enough,” John let some of the brogue sneak through. Just enough to not let himself settle into any shape.

Sherlock’s hands went white over the railing. It made John take a half step forward in alarm, or less alarm than the desire to comfort. “I can’t _see_ you. Please. Just- Let me see what you look like.”

“I’m not terribly impressive.”

At that Sherlock had to take a break to laugh hysterically for a while, crouching down to take deep huffing breaths with his head between his knees, one hand still stubbornly gripping the railing. It petered off into faint wheezing. Faded into sobbing breaths. “Where’s John?” he whispered. If John hadn’t known, hadn’t known Sherlock’s voice so intimately he would have thought it was a lost child speaking, faint and soft as apple blossoms, off and crushed by a breeze.

His entire body went tense.

“Just tell me where he is. I won’t try and find him. I just want to know where he is.”

John stepped forward, kneeling to watch Sherlock carefully. Placing himself down with the precision of a surgical tray, presenting himself for consideration.

“You have to know. You have to know where he is,” anger bubbled up, drifted away. John was unexpected as W, something about him made Sherlock drift between desperation and cautious confusion. The feel of Sherlock’s observation was a physical sensation, like having his skin pulled off like the heaviness of wet clothes being pulled off. A rush of awareness and the cool brush of revelation skating across his body.

“I do,” John said softly. Fingertips resting against the railing, tender and delicate.

Sherlock slowly lifted his head, blinked at John, his expression strangely blank. As if he’d been gently devastated, or greatly disappointed.

John couldn’t help making a face. He knew he didn’t look like much. Approaching forty, hair more grey than golden brown, face crumpled by worry. But Sherlock kept staring and staring, face pulled by shock and something John couldn’t name. His eyes, even from so far away were fluttering, fluttering, back and forth, measuring him up.

“You.”

John smiled; his face felt like a mask, so tired and worn out, “Me. Are you alright?” He motioned to his own face, “You look a little… punched.”

“Nothing important,” Sherlock said quickly. Shifting from one knee to the other in a flurry of motion.

“Maybe the punch to your face is, but you’re moving like you have extensive bruising around your ribs and the skin across your knuckles is cracked. Even in this light it’s a bit obvious,” John was quiet for a moment. “Tim said something about John to make you attack him. Knicked your phone while the two of you rolled around.

“That was easy,” Sherlock replied, still sounding a bit like his legs were taken out from under him. “You look so unassuming, that’s how you do it. Small, nonthreatening, nice middle class accent, clothes to cover up how strong you actually are. Someone got that suit for you, someone who loves you. You wear it too awkwardly. You’d never get anything so nice for yourself. But you were injured recently and so you let them get it for you because you felt guilty for worrying them,” Sherlock paused, tilted his head. “That’s not quite it, but close. Whoever captured you had you somewhere warm. Your hands and face are tanned, although I can’t see how high up it extends.”

“You’re right, mostly,” John said, unable to stop himself from staring, just looking at Sherlock.

“They almost killed you,” Sherlock breathed out.

It took a moment for John to smile softly, pained, shaking away the brush of fire, of memory at the back of his mind. “I’m harder to kill than that. I had things under control.”

Something strange happened to Sherlock’s expression, the way he pulled back, the way he just stared for a moment. He swallowed, gathering his courage, “John-” for a beautiful, exquisite moment John thought Sherlock had recognized him until he realized it was just a question with the end swallowed up.

“Not now, not yet. It would put the two of you in far too much danger. And I need you to be safe Sherlock. When I’ve wrapped everything up, I need you to be alive at the end of it.” 

“You gave me John to keep him safe,” Sherlock said. “I got his things back, his Grey’s and his blanket.”

“And you did an excellent job,” John said quickly. Now he knew Sherlock had his things he wanted them back, but there wasn’t time for that now. It was almost distracting the way that every expression John made was being so obviously recorded by Sherlock’s massive brain. “You gave him something-” John had to stop and clear his throat. “I am infinitely grateful to you, for doing more than I could.” He paused.

“You obviously want to say something,” Sherlock snapped, “go ahead and say it.”

“He loves you very much,” John said softly, the words fill his mouth, ghosts of his past life. “You’re his best friend.”

“But you still won’t-”

“It’s not-”

“I’ll keep him safe!”

“But you’ll-”

“Who cares if I get hurt!” Sherlock snarled.

“I DO!” John roared back at him, surging up to his full height, gripping the railing so it groaned. “You are _exceptional_ Sherlock Holmes and you are _extraordinary_ , and if you don’t think your death would break John’s heart you are more a fool than I gave you credit for!”

Sherlock stared at him as if he had somehow turned into something else. Eyes huge and mouth dipped down in a surprised little droop. And it _infuriated_ John, absolutely _infuriated_ him that this was a surprise to him. The whole room echoed and clamored with the sound of his voice, making him sound ridiculous no doubt, but Sherlock needed to know this.

“You made me furious with that idiotic move to send John off after you _promised him_. But that doesn’t affect the fact you are not to act as though you’re expendable. _Never_ again. You’re arrogant enough, this shouldn’t be a problem.” The room was reverberating from his fury, his clenched hand, the air billowing through him. “As if you oblivious to the fact you’re more than just a function, more than a machine, however much you might wish you could turn off the noise.” 

John’s hand clenched, flexed at the side of his head, before he let it fall, “I can see how much it overwhelms you and how the boredom is like sandpaper on your brain, and yet faced with the choice you take pain as the cost of your work. You care about the work, that each observation is crafted, each deduction fitting seamlessly together. You are a master of your art Sherlock. I will not have you speaking ill of yourself. I have better things to do with my time.”

“I-” Sherlock paused, swallowed, spoke softly. “I won’t.”

All that rage went out of John making him feel tired and aching, like a very old man indeed. He scrubbed his face. His eye caught on Sherlock’s coat, there was something about the way Sherlock moved, something John couldn’t quite knit together until suddenly he could see it, could put it together. “Irene’s worn that coat,” John said suddenly. “And she’s living at 221B.”

“What?” Sherlock startled at the sudden change of subject.

“I told Mycroft, I specifically told him not to get you involved with Irene.”

“She needed a place to stay.”

“She needed to get you to break a secret code so she could send a text to Moriarty so Moriarty could blackmail your brother with the threat of you getting shot for treason and she could blackmail the government for enough money to kill a whale.”

“She what?” Sherlock stared at him, voice lifting at the end of the question.

“It was laughably easy to put together Mycroft’s plan, all those missing corpses, I mean it’s very clever, don’t get me wrong. But the case with the body in the boot, really? I’m surprised everyone didn’t know about it already.”

“What?” Sherlock repeated, face showing how outrageous he thought this was. “Did you have my flat bugged?”

“No,” John rolled his eyes. “You wrote about the cases on your website. Along with your monographs, like the one about the ashes. It was a bit dry, but aren’t most real scientific texts? There was the man you complained about being paranoid because the ash didn’t seem like human ash, the sisters, the body in the boot, it didn’t take much to put the whole thing together. There aren’t that many people in the government that clever, so Mycroft, and who hates brothers Holmes? Well, Moriarty. After I knew what Mycroft’s plan was, and then the way that Irene was looking you up, trying to find information, then the fact she was selling information to Moriarty. Well, it was easy to put it all together.”

“That was… flawless reasoning,” Sherlock sounded a bit flustered, didn’t know what to do with his hands, they fluttered from his lapel, to the railing to his muffler. 

“I should go,” John was suddenly aware of the time, and how staying any longer would be a horrible idea. Never mind Tim and the driver coming in the rescue him, there was the issue of Mycroft’s people. He took a few steps back, not wanting to say goodbye now it was time to do so.

“Do you have a… partner? Romantically?” Sherlock said suddenly. Voice lifting urgently at the start, and then dropping again at the end.

“I-” John froze mid-turn. “What?”

“Like a girlfriend, or a boyfriend…” Sherlock rambled off, eyes falling away, not quite looking at John.

“No, I- _What?”_ Somewhere he had lost the whole conversation, it had just jumped the tracks and run off into the woods. “Are you..?” He cleared his throat, “Sherlock, while I appreciate your interest, I think you’re confusing intellectual intrigue with-”

“No, no, no, _no_ not at all,” Sherlock spoke rapidly. “Then Tim isn’t your-”

John wasn’t sure what his face was doing, he could feel his eyebrows torn between merging with his hairline in surprise and his nose compressing in disgust. “Tim? No, no, _Not at all,_ no. Seriously, _Tim?_ ”

“He’s your brother!” Sherlock tried to jump and stumbled sideways like an overexcited child, clapping his hands with glee, “I deduced you, before Tim showed up and ruined all the variables. I deduced John was your clone. You have his hair, just a bit greyer and his face that goes in all directions, and your _bearing._ I never expected you to be ex-military, but it makes sense, how it reinforced John’s military behaviors. I knew he was mimicking your morality, but he even has a shadow of some of your mannerism.”

Sherlock paused, watching whatever it was that was so fascinating about John’s face. He leaned forward, up on the balls of his feet, swallowed. John stayed still, let Sherlock put his thoughts together.

“He obviously views you as the perfect man, obvious once I’ve actually met you face to face. You are magnificent, even leaving things out so I wouldn’t guess Mycroft’s plan. I put it together. I figured John out and I figured out Tim was your brother!” Sherlock leapt again clapping. 

John grinned at him, but kept moving back. “I’ll put your phone here on the cat walk. Do eat something tonight. You’re too thin.”

“No, don’t,” Sherlock dodged left, realized his way was blocked and not worth trying to climb over and started racing right. John had the advantage, and took all he could of it, running down the catwalk to the small office full of old socks and toppling a few of the soft boxes in front of the door, it would give him approximately five seconds of head start, which he would gratefully take. He was down the stairs and just to the door when he heard Sherlock trip and fall in the office with a mighty cloud of cursing. 

John almost stopped to check on him when Tim appeared, wrapped two strong arms around his middle and tossed him into the open door of the car. “If you’re done flirting, I’d rather we not be captured by the government again,” Tim groused as they sped away from the warehouse.

“This from Mr. ‘let’s take a moment to relax’ as if you didn’t spend enough time downloading things onto his phone.”

Tim gently punched him and John punched him back for punching him so gently. He’d been in the Army. He could take a brotherly punch. 

“Davey has become quite cross,” Tim told him. “The wedding decorator started having a ‘moment,’” this was accompanied by both air quotes and an eye roll, “about renting the decorations the Cubitts were pressuring Hilton into getting and Hilton has started the French Revolution because his dad said something racial about his lady love. So now the colours are white and some kind of posh green instead of white and gold and there might be extra because he has to locate squashes, but it might even out because the decorator likes Hilton better anyway and there’ll be less stuff to rent, so even with the fee it’ll be a less expensive wedding. And Davey is having a few suits made up for you so you’ll have to go right into your fitting so you’ll be ready in time for the pre-wedding party so I’m going to let you get dropped off and find somewhere to hide.”

John stared at him.

“They’re your kids.”

He opened his mouth to argue that if the boys were his kids than Tim was their uncle, but he recognized the shifty look Tim got when he was trying not to think about alcohol. A wedding would be a terrible place for him. Champagne, the side bar and who knew what else, all floating in front of John’s face. Looking away, he caught the driver staring at him.

“What?”

The driver’s eyes snapped away, and he swallowed, still.

“If you have something to ask you can ask it,” John sighed, he’d feel the driver’s question creeping under his skin otherwise for the rest of the trip.

His eyes flicked up again, _”You’re_ Bad Davey’s father?”

John sighed, “It’s complicated.”

“But you’re so…”

John’s raised eyebrows dared him to say small. 

“Vaguely cuddly?” the driver said weakly.

Tim started laughing much more than was really necessary.

John punched him again and didn’t pout for the rest of the journey.

**Do you think this will work? – Hilton**

**Stop fretting. Everything is going to be fine. – D**

**Are you sure? – Hilton**

**You called me your best friend, I can’t just let that go without miraculously fixing your wedding. – D**

**Cheers, I love you mate. Should I send a car to pick you and Elsie? – Hilton**

**Sorry, was that weird? - Hilton**

**Everything’s fine, just got distracted by something. You’ll have to text Elsie, I’ll come in my own car. See you soon. -D  
**


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy a little oasis of John being forced to wear a fancy suit during this time of... excitement. Beta is tentacle_love while Caroline is enjoying her broken leg. Well wishes and kisses for brave Caroline. This chapter kept changing just because I needed something before the next chapter. Also it has Mycroft, so enjoy the Mycroft buffer.

The fitting was a bit tedious, mostly because Bad Davey was snarling again. He swiped at Roost and John, and actually hit the tailor. The interior of Davey’s pretend flat was one floor down from Elsie’s and expensively done up. It didn’t quite look like something out of a magazine, all false edges and untouchable furniture, but it wasn’t a Davey sort of place. He remembered Davey’s little bunker, done up in furniture that was so comfortable as to be disarmingly inviting; the sharp, shiny edges of Davey’s desk, the fine china on his back board. This wasn’t the way Davey would decorate a flat for himself. John wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He was standing on a stool in the middle of the living room, trying not to crawl out of his skin from the tailor’s terror. It didn’t help Davey was taking his own anxiety out on the tailor.

“Enough of that,” John gave Davey a sharp look, made sharper by pain and a lack of sufficient medication. He was in a bit of a mood. 

Davey showed him his teeth, but settled down. “There’ll be posh people all over this party. I don’t want them disparaging of you. You’d go in a jumper if I let you, making me look bad. _Tch.”_

John rolled his eyes. He would have told the tailor Davey was all bark and no bite, but that would have been one of the greatest lies of the century. He had to bite, that was how he survived. But he didn’t always bite all the way down to the bone. “I do know how to dress smart.”

“You know how to dress like somebody’s grandfather.”

“How did you get to be so sassy?” John asked.

“He was born that way,” Roost told him from where he was playing with the spools of thread. He had become a bit tangled with the blue and yellow and was trying to straighten himself out without anyone noticing.

“Roost, don’t play with the spools please,” John told him gently.

That got a mournful look in return, Roost trying to twiddle his narrow fingers. 

“Come here then,” Bad Davey said with more fondness than John was expecting. “I’ll cut you free if you’re going to be a bother. I’ll be paying for the thread too I imagine, such a waste.” Roost grinned and presented his hands for detangling.

It was nice, wonderful, to see Bad Davey do something tender for his brother, no matter how much grumbling he tried to pull off in front of it. Love curled, with quiet, curling fronds and twisting vines in the spaces inside Davey’s cracked open heart, between the splits down deep in him caused by his anguish. Softly growing, tender and frail. What beautiful hope to let it grow and not try to root it out of the fleshy contours of his heart. Hopefully he wouldn’t feel the need to cut as many throats now he wasn’t so unhappy all the time. When Davey saw John’s face he crumpled in for a moment before snarling, anxious beneath that razor blade grimace.

“Don’t be stupid,” John told him. He had no interest in letting Davey get hurt by anything. Of all the people in the world for Bad Davey to be afraid of John should be close to the bottom of that list.

Davey’s face ripped down the middle in surprise, startled. He took three rattling breaths, like a dead man. “I need to go bully the wedding planner,” he snarled and dashed out, slamming the door behind him.

The tailor froze and John sighed. “You might as well finish,” John told him, “he’ll be disappointed otherwise. He’s looking forward to this.” And he was, in a fatalistic sort of way.

“You’re not afraid of him at all,” the tailor stared up at him.

“He’s not very frightening, at the root of things.” Any animal would defend its den, if there was something inside it loved. Defend with tooth and claw.

The tailor’s laugh was a bit hysterical. John saw his life (out of love with his wife, still rather fond of her, wanted children, afraid of children, gambling, ashamed, afraid, likes peppermints…) on the edges of the man. “Are you saying he’s not actually dangerous?”

That made John blink in astonishment, “No, of course not. Just because something’s dangerous doesn’t mean one should live in terror of it.”

This was met with astonishment. John sighed.

“You might as well finish up, I have a party to attend in a couple hours.”

John was in his dark blue suit in time for the party, hair officer sharp and shoes officer shined. He was going to send a text to Tim, but he was waylaid by an anxious Roost, who insisted he didn’t know how to tie his tie – which John knew was patently untrue – but really seemed to just want someone to cosset him. John was still used to thinking of Roost as a little electrified brother energy and intellect going in every direction, exploding, but the boy seemed somehow _brightened,_ proud even, when John took him into the bathroom with a paternal arm and straightened Roost’s hair from an unredeemable mess to a mess that was really trying to be presentable, honest. John had always wanted children in the back of his mind, a tiny baby that would grow into a little rugby player and tetchy teenager and then graduate and eventually become a good person, a lovely man or woman he could harass unbearably in his old age.

He never really thought about anyone wanting him to fuss over them and make faint masculine noises about hair and tying ties and the like. But Roost… Roost looked very happy about it. Sometimes he looked incredibly adult, like a middle aged man was staring out, just happy to have a companion to make sense of the brilliant scramble of his brain, far too old and settled to prune himself into ghastly shapes for the idiotic populace’s pleasure. And sometimes Roost looked so incredibly young and confused, like he was lost someplace he had never been, and never learned the language, and couldn’t find his parents, and just wanted to fly away into a million pieces. John watched Roost adjust his suit with a pleased little smile and stare with his lost little boy curiosity at the toiletries Davey had assembled for him.

“This isn’t your aftershave,” he frowned at the bottle.

John smiled, thinking about the short period of time he didn’t have to bother with a razor in the morning. “I didn’t used to use any aftershave.”

“No I mean,” Roost suddenly looked incredibly upset, cupped his forehead with one narrow hand. “I mean, I can’t be confused. I’m going to be a doctor, I can’t be…”

“Rooster stop,” John snapped sharply. “Stop that. You’re not confused. You’re remembering things correctly. You’re going to unsettle yourself second guessing everything.” He’d calmed Roost enough times when he became overwhelmed, when information came so fast it scrambled around in his head. There was enough without Roost worrying about losing bits of things again.

Roost blinked up at him and nodded, once, twice, “Yes, you would know. I’m not confused.”

“Let’s go before Davey paces a hole in the floor.”

Roost took his hand and refused to let go until they arrived, not even when Davey tried to tease him. Davey looked at John with raised eyebrows, but John just shook his head, mouthed _later_ at him.

They all filed out, Roost still clinging on and Davey wearing glasses. John of course knew Davey’s concern for the two of them, and his draw to Elsie and Hilton. “Go on,” John told him. “We can handle ourselves, go do your best man duties.” The party itself was incredibly posh. Outrageous and a bit showy. Almost all the guests were in bespoke and diamonds. But they didn’t have much on insurgents. Or Mycroft in one of his judgmental strops. If one could get beyond the pretense of it, it was quite beautiful, the soft sound of the band, the rustle of fine fabrics. The smell of flowers light as the brush of a lover’s lips. This was probably out of the Cubitt’s price range. 

Social climbers then, and not trying too hard to hide it, or too confident they were able to pull it off. Hilton, who enjoyed the fresh earth and who according to Davey had the twin hobbies of striving for sainthood and teaching poor children how to grow peas, must love his parents a great deal to allow them to do all this.

When Davey looked doubtful, Roost told him with all seriousness, “We’re very responsible. We’re going to eat a cake and stay out of trouble.”

“You see,” John grinned. “We’re responsible.”

Rolling his eyes, Davey finally wandered off to play at being primarily non-violent. He disappeared between the waiters and the strands of sparkling light, his hair lit up like a crown of fire.

“Are we really going to stay out of trouble?” Roost asked curiously.

John sighed, “Let us fervently hope.” He was afraid the boy would end up clinging to him like a security blanket. Would stick to John with his face pressed against his shoulder. But the ballroom looked like the inside of a fairy tale. The light was soft and golden, making everyone glitter. There were a million things for Roost to explore, far more interesting than a slightly grumpy ex-army doctor. He squeezed Roost’s hand once, “Go on and explore if you’d like.”

“I won’t get into trouble,” he declared and ran off to be fascinated with the mini-quiches. With Roost gone he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. It hadn’t been that long since he was out socializing like a normal person, even if it was at pubs trying to pull, and not at a party of people wearing five figure clothes. Couldn’t be that different, people were all the same. He made his way to the bar and ordered a soda. He didn’t have much painkiller in his system, but it was best not to tempt things.

When he turned around he almost ran into Hilton. The poor great puppy scrambled a bit to organize himself and apologize. The man was so incredibly guileless, so painfully innocent, it was hard not to pat his hand and offer him a biscuit. It probably should be a bit annoying, but Hilton wasn’t vapid or empty headed, he was just anxious.

“You don’t have try and impress me,” John said gently. “You’ve already come highly recommended.”

“It’s just that,” Hilton had started to bend forward, an absent tendency to reduce his height advantage, “I’m not good at these sorts of things, fancy parties, I like to grow things, do the nature outing stuff, grow leeks.” His face pulled in discomfort, “Everyone here is shamming at something.” His face suddenly lit up with horror. John tried not to laugh, but couldn’t quite keep down the smile. Hilton’s honesty refreshed him after so much time pretending so many things to so many people. He must have such a feeling of freedom.

“Its fine,” John smiled. “I suspect you’re right. Except maybe Roost; like you he has an honest heart. I imagine Davey’s pretending not to be offended for the sake of you and Elsie and I’m pretending that I might find someone here to have a decent conversation with outside the immediate wedding party.”

“There are lots of nice people here,” Hilton said optimistically.

Smiling, John toasted him, “It’s good of you to let your parents get away with this.”

“Is it that obvious?” Hilton asked in a small voice. “Do you think I shouldn’t change anything then?”

“I think you’re making exactly the right decision,” John said gently. “You’re going to be man of your own house soon. You need to focus on building that with your wife.”

“You’re just like Davey,” Hilton told him earnestly. “He gives the best advice, I can tell him anything. I usually don’t go around saying so much, it’s just the,” he made a helpless gesture, “the wedding stuff.”

“I’m glad he’s found you too,” John smiled.

“I also wanted to tell you that you’re welcome to come to the wedding. I know you’re here for Roost, well,” he was trying not to comment on the absence of said Rooster.

“Don’t worry, I have my eye on him,” he nodded to the bobbing flash of red orange where Roost was standing, holding both a plateful of quiches and an enthusiastic conversation with a round man wearing a large mustache. “He tends to cling, I’m trying to encourage him to be his own man.”

“That makes sense. I also wanted to tell you someone’s looking for Roost.”

This had the effect of making John snap to attention. “Really?”

“A rather tall man, kind of… intimidating,” Hilton said. “A relative I think, he looks a bit like your sons.”

“Does he?” John ran through his mental catalogue of people. Mycroft Holmes was perhaps the closest, but why would he dare? And how did he even figure out where they were?

“When the doorman asked if he was looking for Dr. Watson, Mr. David Watson’s younger brother, or Mr. Watson, he said Mr. David Watson’s younger brother, which I thought was a bit off, I mean, not off necessarily, but unusual, since Rooster is, what, fourteen? He’s still a kid, practically. So I thought I’d tell you and-” The commas must have confused Mycroft then, he must have assumed there were two Watsons instead of just three. He wondered how long it would take for him to figure out the guest list referred to Doctor Watson in addition to Mr. David and his brother instead of John and his brother Davey.

“That’s alright,” said the unmistakable voice of Mycroft Holmes, “It would be more convenient to talk to Dr. Watson.”

Hilton blinked at him, standing tall and stately, elegantly looming to the side.

“It’s alright Hilton,” John said calmly, “We know each other.”

Eying Mycroft for a few more seconds, Hilton nodded hesitantly and disappeared into the crowd.

“Do you mind if we find a secluded corner somewhere? Since that’s more your style.”

“We might as well,” John sighed walking slowly away from the crush, Mycroft staying tight by his side, “Since you tracked me down. Even if it was accidental. I should ask you what you want with Davey.”

“I would have thought you’d be asking what I wanted with Rooster.”

John took a slow sip of soda. He wasn’t that dense even on the pain medication. “The pauses threw you, at first you thought _younger brother of Mr. David Watson_ was a qualifier. But it was unnecessary and unlikely. After a moment you considered how unlikely it would be that Dr. John Watson would consider putting his full title on a guest list at the age of eight. Especially since you considered Davey was the one to put in his guests and he was even less likely to identify his brother John as a doctor at the age of eight. The imagined commas threw you.”

Mycroft made a bit of a face, smoothed down his tie. That was practically throwing himself across the furniture for Mycroft. “It should have been clear to me that Sherlock had some sort of encounter. This is the first time I’d seen him smug in a long time. Or cross. Although I never expected you to be a place that would be so exposed. Anyone who’s seen John would recognize you as his father immediately.”

John slowly tilted his head, considering. “You’re a bit excited about seeing me.”

Mycroft looked calmly down at him as if John couldn’t see him clapping his hands in glee around the edges. “Doctor then? Of medicine I see,” Mycroft’s face was a mechanical wonder. Eyebrow lifted, sardonic lift of the mouth, the choreography of the fine muscles, up his cheeks and across his jaw. Had John been away from the Holmes’ so long, so separated from London, that he had stopped seeing the exquisite beauty of things and started being overwhelmed by them.

“You’re staring,” Mycroft tilted his head two precise degrees.

“Observing,” John answered smoothly. “You’re a bit gleeful, and a little disappointed.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you and your brother both have always believed I was the cure for everything that disappointed you in the world. Including yourselves. And I’m just myself. I am what I am.” John’s smile was slight and self-deprecating in the way that only people settled into themselves could ever be.

“It’s all down to a lack of self-confidence then?” Mycroft’s voice tilted just inches away from mocking.

“There’s a difference between lack of self-confidence and treating yourself like a machine. What is it you say to each other when you’re discomforted? That there’s something wrong with the two of you? That you’re somehow different? Broken?”

“You presume,” Mycroft snapped.

John only smiled, looked for a place to put his glass so he could free his one working hand.

“You’ve been shot,” Mycroft said suddenly.

A very precise lack of reaction happened, as if John could feel himself becoming a smooth pane of glass. The look he got in return was unsettled. “I’ve never seen someone do that before.”

He tilted his head in question.

“Go so completely… blank. Have any of your expressions been real?”

He blinked slowly.

 _“Stop that.”_ Mycroft looked honestly distressed beneath his unflappable exterior, so John relented. “You were shot. In your shoulder. A tricky area. John saved Sherlock’s life once by shooting a man in the shoulder. Someone was trying to kill you during some kind of confrontation. More than that. When you said you were busy, you-” he suddenly blinked. “You tricked me.”

“Perhaps a strong word,” he prickled a little.

“No, you _sheltered_ me,” Mycroft was _angry_ now of all things. “You knew what I would assume when you used certain language, you mimicked my own diction. _What has you so busy at this particular time?_ I asked and you said, _I’m busy at almost every particular time._ You said you were _at a break._ You referenced classified government information because you knew I would associate it with my job.”

John watched the end of the epiphany.

“You made me assume you were in some high level meetings arranging the world. Made me assume you were a better me,” he made a face. “That sounds awful. So simple in the face of such elegantly complex manipulation. Because of course you couldn’t tell me that you were what? Captured? Interrogated? Timothy Westmorland had the signs of torture, do-”

“This is a wedding Mr. Holmes,” his smile was tight as a leather strap. “We’re at a wedding party. We should avoid getting ahead of ourselves.” 

Mycroft stared at him.

“It doesn’t really matter either way, does it?”

“What doesn’t?”

“What was keeping me busy. Sherlock’s been living with Irene,” the strap of John’s smile snapped at the edges.

“You don’t approve?” Mycroft was back of steady ground, face rearranged to perfect elegance.

“She cares enough to stay, but not enough not to hurt him for her own interests.”

“Some could say that’s her art.”

He gave Mycroft a look, “I doubt he signed a contract. She likes how they’re similarly broken, and how vulnerable he is in matters of the heart.”

His eye caught at the sight of Davey’s red head as he passed for human, the delicate imitation of a laugh cultivated carefully.

“He’s calling himself your son.” It was good to hear the power back in Mycroft’s voice.

“Convenience,” he muttered.

“Not just convenience. As unfamiliar as I am with the softer emotions, I recognize naked affection when I see it.”

“They’re-” John’s voice cracked, awkwardly. A slip, more obvious by the way he scrambled to right himself again. “They’re good boys.”

“It’s a bit surprising that you’re so fond of Davey. He has a tendency to fall a bit on the side of the sociopathic. I suppose that was the problem with the first generation, they were a little too good at being killers.”

“Your theories have been thoroughly shared. What you think Davey has been through,” John snapped at him, his temper finally coming through. “I suppose if Sherlock were a child, small and helpless, dependent on you and you knew he’d be taken out a shot like a sick dog you’d just sit and knit socks. That if were the two of you on the streets you’d quietly watch the cruel teeth of too much dig into his beautiful brain and just rip him open.”

Mycroft flinched, going pale and thin lipped. “That was neither a confirmation nor denial, but I see your point.”

He imagined the look he gave the great posh git was “I imagine he was always a bit bad. But he’s no sociopath.” He tried to settle his temper again, settle himself quietly down in his bones. He looked back to Davey standing guard at Hilton’s shoulder.

“You didn’t have much of a family growing up.”

Looking away from Davey watching Elsie and Hilton, John blinked up at Mycroft, “Are you telling me or fishing for information?”

Mycroft tightly smiled at him.

John couldn’t help his snort of laughter.

“I only meant they are exceptionally important to you. I imagine you gave up a great deal for them.”

John would give up much more. He couldn’t get his old life back, he might as well use the life he had to try and help the boys.

There was a shimmer of bright hair flashing and then Roost descended on them, or rather he descended on John, taking the glass and tangling their hands together. “Roost,” John said gently. He didn’t want Mycroft getting any ideas about speaking unkindly to Roost.

Turning so his back was to Mycroft, he pressed his forehead to John’s good shoulder. “I didn’t get confused. It’s just loud, and there’s a lot of people. Can you talk right now?”

“Would you mind giving us a moment?” John asked.

To his surprise Mycroft nodded, a strange expression on his face, and left the little secluded corner.

“Do you want me to take you home?” John asked.

“Davey won’t like that,” Roost said into his shoulder.

“Davey won’t want you to be miserable.” He squeezed Roost’s hand gently. “I know this frustrates you, but you’re old enough to start judging for yourself if things are too much instead of pushing through until you break down.”

“Maybe,” Roost said carefully, watching him. “Maybe we can go somewhere quiet for a little while.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea to me,” John smiled back.

 

**Mycroft, Have had a confrontation with Irene. Need immediate assistance. – SH**


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betas are Caroline and tentacle_love. I also wanted to send out a warning, starting the Wednesday after next (chapter 19) things are going to get a bit troubled, there aren’t going to be a huge number of chapters til the end, probably less than ten by my mental calculations, so it might be a good idea for those of you who might get too anxious to just wait til the end and read it in all one go. Or if you want to enjoy the edge of your seat ups and downs you are also more than free to do so.

Despite the fervent protests of Hilton’s parents, the wedding was moved up and simplified. Elsie and Hilton slowly turned the air around them into some soft lit fairy tale. There was a steady dependability about them, about their love, as if this was their fiftieth anniversary instead of their wedding. It wasn’t a place Tim needed to be at all.

Tim had taken to lurking in the tax sections of libraries and discussing cats with Molly Hooper according to the calls John made to him twice daily. (He was able to recognize his own paranoia.) As well as being kind enough to put up with John’s incessant fretting, Tim was gently permissive with John’s use of his time.

Most of the two days before the wedding John slept and healed. The great star of a wound still was ravaged red, but it was less a knot of swollen flesh and angry tissue. With a great deal of pleasure he freed himself from his sling and dropped down to a lower dose medication, which he could take more of, because it was less likely to drug him into a stupor. John’s mood had improved by bounds, although Bad Davey still pointed his temper at disobedient Cubitts and reluctant wedding staff. It calmed John to be of use.

He also met Elsie’s kids; they thought they were her siblings, which John understood. They were far too old. Elise only twenty-one, barely younger than Davey, although Davey had made her a little older in her paperwork and the oldest of the two children just turned seven. “Don’t worry,” Davey’s smile spread slow and wide as he stood next to John who rested against the railing of the choir loft. “When I first met Elsie I beat their father’s face down his throat. Beat him in. Left him to die alone. Usually I’d lop off his head, but I had Elsie to take care of. She’s strong,” he said fiercely, nostalgic, gratified in his vengeance. “She’s a good woman.”

John fought to keep his hands still.

Davey made an annoyed sound, “You know I’m bad. Don’t be like that. He hurt her, I demanded satisfaction. Left him in the dark, afraid and bleeding to let him see how he liked it. Who knows what happened to him, dragged off by rats, someone stole his clothes, who cares,” his pause cut sharp through the air between them. “Now you’re upset. You know I’m bad.”

“I don’t know if I’d do much different,” John said.

Davey shrugged, looked away, “She’s a good woman. Smart. But she’s still hurt inside some places that Hilton’s able to fix up. What a dear little lamb he is. Sweet little puppy.”

“He’s hardly little. Has his assistant been giving you any more trouble?”

“Eh, I’m liable to rip out his tongue for how he’s mean to Hilton, whispering all sorts of stuff. He’s learned to stay out of my way, and Elsie’s. He gives her the creeps and I won’t have him bothering her. Told Hilton he wasn’t to let the nasty little… wasn’t to let him come. Hilton’s such a little love.” Davey sighed like a bedraggled parent, chin leaning in the curve of one palm.

“If he wasn’t, you wouldn’t let him into Elsie’s illustrious presence.”

Davey gave him the side eye to see if he was joking. He must have been satisfied, because he went back to watching Roost play cards with Elsie’s kids. 

The night before the wedding Bad Davey slipped into John’s room, curling hesitantly against John’s back. Each one of Davey’s carefully controlled breaths, as if the very air were rending him to bits, cut into John’s heart. Affection existed as an unnatural thing to Davey, too soon pulled from his vocabulary if he had any chance of saving his baby brother. John didn’t know if Davey knew how to ask for comfort other than small counted exhales that cut down through the ribs. It was a wonder Davey hadn’t bled out by now.

Davey pressed his forehead between John’s shoulder blades.

John tried not to feel angry.

By morning Davey was gone. John smiled and didn’t say anything about the night or the way Davey almost touched John’s fingers before pulling away again.

The wedding itself would have done the royal family proud. It shimmered in shades of green, soft like mist over spring grass. The vicar was quiet, somewhat short sighted and rather pleased with himself on general principle. He had a sort of concave shape about him that made him immediately nonthreatening. The flowers had Davey written all over them – well not Davey, but the way he looked at the bride and groom. They looked soft, like the gentle exhale of expectation, the tender hover of fingertips over a sleeping lover’s cheek. Like the hope of adoration before feather light satisfaction. All white, light, and chased by the unhardened fronds of ferns the freshest green. It said a great deal about Davey, who slit throats, pulled out people’s teeth to gain their obedience, and built a wedding on wholesomeness, on innocence. 

Hilton kept knocking things over and blushing until Davey had to stomp around so as not to get angry at him for getting so flustered. “Sorry,” Hilton kept saying. “Sorry.” John was only there because Hilton had taken a strange liking to him and Davey wanted a hanger-on.

“Just don’t faint during the wedding,” Davey told him with a fierce face. “You’re too tall. You’ll crush me before I can catch you.”

“David,” Hilton took Bad Davey by the shoulders, looking seriously at him. “I wanted to say thank you. I really appreciate how you’ve been there for me. How you never questioned my marrying Elsie. You didn’t have to do all this for me.”

“It’s fine.”

“This is important, this is going to be one of the most important days of my life, and you’re one of the most important people in my life. I don’t know what you see in me, why you like me so much when you’re so cool and smart and I can hardly string two words together when I’m not talking to kids. And you’re kind of scary sometimes. But you’ve always been kind to me.” Hilton took a deep breath and watched Davey. “I just needed you to know. That you really are my best mate.”

“You’re- You’re nice too,” Davey said awkwardly, patting Hilton shoulder. “You’re a good person.”

Hilton seemed more than willing to take that for what it was worth and allowed Davey to escape with John in tow.

“Don’t ask me if I’m fine or not,” Davey whispered irritably as he tucked John and Roost into their pew. “I need to go join the rest of the wedding party before the wedding planner hemorrhages.”

Hilton took his place, waiting at the altar. Then Bad Davey appeared leading Elsie, his sharp edges loosened slightly in pleasure. For all the difficulty Davey had with the affair he was also happy for his friends. And Elsie looked magnificent. She had always had a presence, jewel bright, a star into herself. Like a queen dressed down and wandering amongst the peasants. The purposeful line of her posture like the sway of calligraphy, the strength of her gaze, the confident grace in the way she moved. She was as always a vision, now in a white gown, modest in design, sleek, thoughtful. Her veil was long. John wasn’t entirely sure, but it seemed that women liked long veils. That that was something he’d seen on telly. Princess Diana certainly had had a long enough veil. Once Elsie had finished her walk, Davey took his place by Hilton’s shoulder and John had to convince Roost to sit down again.

The awkwardness that had been chasing Hilton’s every step disappeared. For all the charm of his guilelessness there was a new, more settled sort of command in his large frame. Where Elsie was concerned there knew no doubt, nor fear. She was his polar star, his magnetic north and he turned toward her like the point of a compass. Davey stood looking dangerous and pleased, an urban fox with a nice fat rat between his paws. All the gentleness that Davey had been wearing like a too big coat slipped off leaving something sleek and dangerous standing guard.

Ellie offered Hilton the edge of her veil which he treasured with his fingertips before lifting. Their faces pleased, caught on the edge of some private joke, or a happiness that turned their focus to sun light. It seemed in that moment that nothing bad could ever happen to them. That despite all the hardship, John had pushed through to get here; sitting in a church with Roost’s attention flitting in every direction. That he was a small, sideways, secondary part of this. That not everything in the world was falling apart.

Here, right now, something wonderful was happening, and if this was happening now, then surely not everything could be so bad. That there was hope. It wasn’t as long as John would have thought in the end. All that work and hanging up the banners and then it was finished and every one was throwing bird seed. Hilton got a bit tangled in a seat belt when trying to get into the car that would take them to the reception, but he straightened himself out and off they went.

John had a feeling the collective staring of the Cubitt family often did that to Hilton. Generally speaking, except for the fact he lacked a filter a good portion of the time, he was rather coordinated.

The reception was even better than the wedding, even though Hilton parents pulled faces at the decorations. John liked it; he was getting tired of pretension. Bad Davey stood sentinel over the couple clasping tight to each other’s happy affections while the receiving line went past. Roost embraced Bad Davey, Hilton, Elsie, and the wedding planner, who was standing too close to the happy couple, with big full-bodied hugs, mostly because he knew he could get away with it. Much of the enthusiasm Roost had been chasing during the wedding stemmed simply from the fact Roost adored being happy. It turned him playful and affectionate.

The dinner was great too, the sort of food that a mum would make if she was a five star chef. John and Roost were sat at a table of doctors and biologists, although they couldn’t have been that expert in their fields. The surgeon to John’s left had a pretty weak grasp of surgical strategy. They ended up talking for most of dinner about abdominal repair work. It was the closest to really truly happy since John had lived with Sherlock.

John let it wash over him. The gentle laughter and the expectation of it. The thought that everything would be okay.

Hilton was a better dancer than even John had hoped, smooth and seamless with Elsie in his arms. There was a way he leaned, just to the smallest degree so he wasn’t looming over her, his fingers clinging to hers. Every once in a while they’d become overwhelmed a bit and just press themselves together, too pleased to even look at anything else. Granted that was a bit how they always acted, so it wasn’t much different, except now they were much better dressed and had flowers attached to them. They seemed to view the whole thing with a healthy dose of humour and pleasure, glad for the chance to show each other off, but not falling into the trap of getting too many stars in their eyes about things. It would work.

It would be something that would work.

At half past midnight the Watsons were back at Davey’s posh flat. While Davey wandered off, John tucked Roost into bed. The soft flutter of his fingertips and eyelashes weighted down by his sleepiness. His face turned tender in the half light from the open doorway, so old and so young. 

John had known what he was willing to do to protect his new family while he was still in Paris. Roost’s trusting snuffle was enough to remind him of the rest of it. Despite his sleep-gentled fingers Roost had an impressive grip on John’s lapel. Carefully John slipped off his coat and wrapped it around a pillow which the boy seemed to find a suitable substitute.  
“Neat trick,” Davey said from the doorway. “I hope you hope you don’t expect to try and trick me with a pillow in a coat.”

John looked at him, considering. “No I wouldn’t think so. You much smarter than you look.”

Davey very visibly barely resisted rolling his eyes. “He’s asleep? I haven’t seen him properly calm like that in ages. I knew you got him to sleep. Before, when you were little. But I’ve never seen him so still like this.”

“You were smart to send him to school. It’s been good for him.”

“Hmm.”

Under that sound John could hear the compulsion to pinch Roost, pull out a lock of his hair, reestablish himself as the maddest and the meanest. But he stayed in the doorway, just watching. The place he had always been with Roost. “He loves you. He knows how much to be afraid of you; he won’t let you hurt him.”

“Hmm,” Davey said again. “Let’s go get marvelously drunk.”

 

Mycroft watched Sherlock. Watched the slight watering in his eyes. Nothing most of the population would notice. But Sherlock had been a very quiet baby. It paid to pay attention.

This was perhaps what W, what Dr. Watson, was trying to protect Sherlock from. A destroyed face resting in a knot of dark hair, a cold body. The way her body was left so precisely unbruised, like a great stretch of blank canvas. Like silence. The end of intrigue. The interview with Watson had been enlightening to the extreme. Watson was a victim as much as he was a master of that frightening empathy, Mycroft suspected. Sparing Sherlock from the knowledge of his confinement, allowing Mycroft to imagine a reflection, some powerful political overseer shifting nations like pieces on a chess board. Hiding pain from them as if that might spare him some of his own. Or perhaps, for a mind like Watson’s, physical pain wasn’t that distressing. 

Mind over matter.

But Watson’s hands were worn, scarred. He was browned and slightly weathered by the sun. He was a man who lived in his bones, who viewed his body as a tool if not quite transport. A man who was of use, he was no mastermind up in his tower; he was an emperor hiding in the midst of the common people. At least Sherlock had been warned before Mycroft’s plan had been exposed to whatever terrorist group Moriarty had in his pocket this week.

“How does Sherlock know her from…” Dr. Hooper paused, considering a way to politely say, “not her face?”

That was a question that didn’t really need an answer.

He found his brother floating like an exceptionally narrow cloud in the hall. Blinking slowly under the florescent lights. He offered him a cigarette.

What else was there to do?

“She knew too much. Do you know who did it?”

“Someone domestic.” Loudly not using the name Moriarty, they felt the shadow of the name float around them like some noxious odour. “She was held and then dumped.”

“Mycroft,” Sherlock said suddenly. “Do you think there’s something wrong with us?”

He watched Sherlock. Watched him blow the smoke out in a cloud. No grace, just force of personality. “What do you mean?”

“That we’re somehow different? Broken?” 

There was something distinctly familiar about that.

“W said I wasn’t. That I wasn’t to-“

“He’s very fond of you,” Mycroft said, because it was true. W had a cautious sort of interest in Mycroft, like he was a particularly intriguing piece of art, but W had always been drawn to Sherlock.

“John would be disappointed in me,” Sherlock took a long shaky drag. He was almost out of cigarette. “All I feel is anger and relief and underneath it all just nothing. And I was, I was fond of her. I suppose that was her game. _What a sweet little virgin, let’s see if he’ll do a little dance._ ”

Mycroft felt slightly sick. Strange and blank. “This isn’t your responsibility-” he started to say before a bright red dot, entirely too cheerful a shade, appeared over his brother’s heart. Immediately, Mycroft yanked Sherlock back, pulled so he stood behind Mycroft’s shoulder. A sniper (criminal, espionage, rival, mind game) wouldn’t need to use a laser sight, it would be used as intimidation (See: Moriarty – The Pool).

A trill of laughter, not quite a giggle came up, and there was the little Irish -

“Really?” Moriarty asked, every line of Mycroft’s thought reshuffled, shifted and refocused. “That’s not what W told me when we were at his son’s school. Sweet kid, what’s his name? Roost?”

“You’re lying,” Sherlock snapped. 

“I really wish I had a picture of your face while you try to convince yourself of that,” Moriarty giggled again, diamond bright and delighted. One wrist was in a cast, a dark stylish grey, in the other hand he held an apple, bright and shimmering. Underneath that Moriarty looked a bit worn at strange angles. As if he’d gotten too close to something that was a little too mad.

The apple crunched between his teeth.

Mycroft thought of Roost who had played the part of a kinder, gentler Sherlock at his age. Intelligent, overwhelmed. Trusting as he clung to Watson, Watson who comforted him, the curl of a calloused hand gentle down the curve of his head. The soft whispers, no nonsense, tenderness. Roost and Sherlock as mirrors to each other. Watson loved Roost. That could not be disputed; no one broke like that for anything less than love.

Watson loved Sherlock by the next step of logic. 

(Who was Mycroft in this scenario? Bad Davey? The boy was just a criminal, wasn’t a powerful name. No one had ever heard of him, except on the barest level, and they were all too scared to say anything. But how did shifting drugs through the criminal underworld quite compare. If he was at all like Mycroft that sort of work should be boring. Why wasn’t he bored?)

Moriarty wasn’t telling the whole truth.

“W hates you,” Sherlock snapped while Mycroft calculated. Something was missing. Watson never just did one thing at a time. Things seemed unconnected, but they all tied together in the end.

Moriarty sunk his teeth in again. The juice from the apple wet on his lips, on his chin. He smiled and crunched. Precise sharp sounds. 

“Hates me? Hates me enough to shoot me for handling his baby boy? Hates me enough to have me shot any time between then and now? Hates me enough he let me see him before you did? Hates me enough so play the most delightful games. He was this close.” Moriarty held up his two fingers around what was left of the apple. The thought that the action would be more intimidating if he had the use of both hands and wasn’t wrangling with fruit comforted less than it should with the shine of his bared teeth, _glistening_ and the desperate, victorious, fury in his eyes. Something was wrong in them. Like he’d been burnt somehow inside, just a little. “Have I got friends in high places boys! I’m moving on up! I’m the next king of the Underworld.”

That wasn’t right, that wasn’t quite right. There were too many mistruths in the wrong places.

Moriarty’s eyes dropped down than up, face snarling with contempt. “Sorry about the girlfriend Sherly. That’s just too bad.” His voice sprawled down the scale like a rolling corpse.

 

“That’s not true,” Sherlock whispered at Mycroft’s back once Moriarty had disappeared down the hall. There was no point in chasing after him, he’d already be gone. “It’s not true. Someone’s been pruning Moriarty’s web. Someone frightfully clever. W hates him.”

Mycroft controlled his breathing. Things had been set up with Molly misinformation and John’s widower father, with Sherlock’s deductions of Tim so that Tim would be mistaken for John’s father. Even though it conflicted with some of their deductions Mycroft himself believed it. This mess with Moriarty, whatever it was, was also a trick.

Something, the edge of an assumption blossomed in Mycroft’s brain. A terrible bright ecstatic idea. Watson was always looked ahead, what had he seen, prepared for, before Sherlock had fallen into the midst of things. Another bit of sleight of hand. Another replacement of one thing for the other?

The enormity of it surge in his brain, the complicated brilliance, tucking and rolling into itself. Beautiful. Mycroft almost teared up at the thought of it.

“What?” Sherlock asked him.

“I just thought of something,” Mycroft said, surprised at how level his voice was. “Something just occurred to me. I wouldn’t worry yourself too much about Moriarty. If Watson was working with him he wouldn’t permit all this ridiculous showmanship. There’s nothing about W or John that is in the least bit overdramatic or ostentatious. He was trying to make you jealous. Overreact.”

“I want to go home now,” Sherlock said blankly.

Mycroft straightened himself, “You’ll be coming to my flat tonight of course.”

Sherlock stared at him, petulant, irritated, wounded and needing a nest to curl up in.

“Security reasons.”

 

 

**Adler has appeared like you said. I’ll keep an eye on her. –GN**


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was really worried about this chapter, not only because of the fact I ran out of words before I reached the thing I was excited to do, so you'll just have to check that again next week. Sorry! No hints. In the meantime, enjoy! Lots of people have been asking for this, and I've had this scene planned for quite a while, but certain things had to be set up first and so it just took a while to get here. My betas were tentacle_love and Caroline, who betaed on despite a broken leg. Excellent work!
> 
> Also don't always expect chapters this massive. And I've been chided on using z instead of the British s, so I tried to fix that. Why are you still reading this? Go on! enjoy the massive chapter!

John left Roost taking advantage of his brother’s post binge sleepiness to cuddle, gave them a quick check to make sure they wouldn’t roll over anything sharp and headed out. Davey wouldn’t be up too much anyway and John wanted to see Sherlock again. He was worried about how thin he looked, how worn at the edges. Little things noticed after living in each other’s pockets. It wasn’t too different, John suspected, from the wear that made Tim frown sideways at him. 

The way to Baker Street held a sort of Christmas morning excitement that set his fingers tapping and the edges of his mouth tipping upward. He was glad he hadn’t had much to drink the night before. His primary job had been to watch Davey be unable to deal with emotions. John had told Tim about his planned visit early this morning and hopefully Tim would keep his begrudging agreement to keep John out of CCTV as much as possible on his way to the door of 221. There didn’t appear to be lights on in the sitting room windows, but then Sherlock sometimes kept some unusual hours. He had to stop after paying the cabbie and just observe the door, the pavement, the street, Mrs. Hudson’s bins; the familiarity of it all. This would likely begin in one of two ways. Mrs. Hudson would recognize him or she wouldn’t. He checked his watch again, he had timed this right, not too early. Mrs. Hudson would be up by now at least.

After another deep breath, he gently pushed on the door bell.

When Mrs. Hudson opened the door the sense of déjà vu was so strong he couldn’t get his tongue to release from the roof of his mouth. For a brief moment she almost seemed to recognize him before she blinked a few times and said, “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” John said, smiling past the brief pinch of disappointment. “I’m here to see Sherlock Holmes. Mr. Holmes.”

“Oh!” she said happily. “You’re a client then, I thought I knew your face. You’ve been here before?”

This time the smile moved naturally across his face like the rising of the sun. “Once or twice. Is Sherlock up?”

“Oh no, he should have called and canceled your appointment. He was called away unexpectedly, something to do with a different case, and well, he hasn’t come in yet.”

“Would you mind terribly if I waited? Just upstairs, quiet as a mouse.”

Mrs. Hudson seemed on the edge of asking him to come back. John relaxed his shoulders, tilted his head slightly, put on the cuddly look he had perfected in his more diminutive size.

“Please, I won’t bother a thing. He’ll be expecting me and I think he’ll be rather disappointed if he finds out I was here and left. You know how he is; he gets the bit between his teeth and he won’t let it go for anything. One day he’s going to starve himself to death running around on a case.”

“Won’t he just,” Mrs. Hudson said, her previous hospitality turning to real friendliness. “It’s so nice to see a friend of Sherlock’s who, well-” she stopped talking, anxious not to infer anything unpleasant about Sherlock. She did step aside in a flurry, just remembering she was standing in the doorway.

“Someone who’s fond of him?” John finished for her, smiling good naturedly. “He’s not always the easiest to get along with. It’s worth the trouble in the end though isn’t it? Getting to know him.”

“Yes indeed,” Mrs. Hudson smiled at him, a strange mixture of melancholy and pleased with John. “It’s been so hard for him since John- But well, that’s neither here nor there. I’ll let you go up and tell him you’re here when he arrives. You won’t mind waiting? It’s just your shoulder-”

John looked down at the sling and then very carefully shrugged; he was starting to master it one shouldered. “It’s alright as long as I don’t think about it,” he said, offering her a small bow in return. “It’s been long enough since it was injured it’s not too bad.” It was impossible not to want to tell Mrs. Hudson everything. John had to shepherd his tongue away from saying anything that might endanger her. She watched him a few more moments, treading his careful way up the stairs, a thoughtful look on her face.

The flat, when John reached the top of the stairs, had less of Irene imprinted on it than he expected, and was far more of a mess. The front room seemed to be covered in piles of books barely holding back the floodwaters of total chaos in the form of papers, shiny magazines and a mountain of different coloured balls of wool. Maybe there was a murderous knitter around, knitting sinister jumpers. John adjusted his own jumper. It kept rucking up under his sling.

It was cozy, familiar to be in 221B, even if the place was disordered. John wouldn’t have thought Irene would have put up with that much, but then John was sure she was far better at picking her battles than John was and figured it was better to let things lie. When he turned toward the kitchen he had to take a deep soothing breath. His plan had been to just sit and patiently wait but no one could possibly make a decent cuppa here. The bin full of high end take out, including a few logos of places he didn’t know did take out. He sighed at the kitchen, the contents of the fridge, the state of the kitchen table. The floors weren’t too bad; at least things hadn’t gone that far out of control. 

John set to scrubbing the herd of teacups all bunched together for protection between beakers and dirt samples. His sling was carefully put to the side to free his movement, he wasn’t going to let a reappearing wound interfere with his life. There were a few that would live in a state of tea-stainedness for the rest of their teacup lives, and one with a strange mold growing in it that had the look of a possible experiment that John put to the side. In the degrees of stain in the cups John could see how long they’d been brewed, how often Sherlock had forgotten the tea and overbrewed it, how often he became impatient and underbrewed. There sat in the hollow of John’s hands all the days they’d been separated, a count of Sherlock’s life since their separation. There was a warm, addictive affection. A melancholy that cut into his heart, made him ache for sadness. Once the kitchen was safe to make tea in, and Sherlock’s experiments organized out of the way, Sherlock still hadn’t returned. It simply wouldn’t do to have the flat be such a mess. John would need a neat flat. After some investigation John was able to find the boxes Sherlock used for reference on different types of cardboard and started to ruthlessly contain the impending wave of loose leaf papers. 

It wasn’t his original plan to sort them, he had had no intention of presuming to know what was going on in Sherlock’s head on a good day, but it was just so obvious: _understanding motives, historical cases: easy, historical cases: hard, historical cases: reference, things that could probably kill people, poison, recipes for healthy food, experiments Sherlock was dying to perform, more pictures of plants._ He labeled them all, trying not to laugh at the angry underlines Sherlock had made on an article about blood splatter. It couldn’t have been more obvious if Sherlock was stroppily proclaiming-

“What is it Mrs. Hudson?”

John looked up from his place on the floor of 221B and the neatly separated papers (had he really put a filing tab in labeled _scientific articles that make Sherlock stroppy_ ) straining his ears to hear the light birdsong of Mrs. Hudson from down the stairs. “Your friend’s here to see you Sherlock. I told him you were away, but he said you’d be sorry to miss him.”

“Friend?” Sherlock sounded incredulous in the extreme.

“He seemed very fond of you.”

John listened to Sherlock leap halfway up the stairs and then slowly climb the rest of the way up, back straight enough to be used as a level. When he saw John he froze halfway between pulling his scarf off, staring.

“Hello,” John said, clearing his throat, “I hope you don’t mind I tidied up.”

Sherlock continued to stare at him.

“And I washed your teacups they were a bit-” John tried to stand, pushing himself up off one of the sturdier boxes, forgetting about the healing bullet hole in his shoulder. The sudden pain flaring in his shoulder sent him down on his back cursing. When he could get his eyes open again, Sherlock was staring angrily down at him. 

“You’re a genius! How can you forget you were injured?”

“You’re a genius,” John snapped back, “How can you go days without eating? Stop looming over me,” he groused. “Great lanky git.”

Sherlock leaned back in favour of looking at the tabs John used to divide up his paperwork and to let John get his breath back. “’Articles Sherlock wrote,’” he quoted, then peered at what had been filed there. “These are actually the articles I wrote. I used a penname.”

“No one else gets that excited about mold spores,” John breathed out from where he was lying on the floor pretending he still had dignity.

“Many other people get more excited about mold spores. You recognised my writing style.”

John just sighed.

“You’re in my flat.”

That got Sherlock one opened eye. “Why did you think I’d never see you again?”

“Moriarty said you’ve been favouring him,” Sherlock said blandly. John was up in a moment, kneeling in front of the sitting Sherlock, looking him over.

“When did you last see him? Last night. That bast- Did he touch you? Threaten you? I’ll break his other wrist.”

“Why are you so frantic?”

His sound of disbelief would - in any other case that didn’t involve a furious army doctor - be amusing, “Because he’s psychotic and suicidal. He has nothing to lose and the desire to burn the world around him as he goes. And he’s annoying.”

“He’s also incredibly clever.”

“Clever enough to push your buttons,” John groused. He stood, pretending there was not a hint of wobbling about him and dodged around the boxes to head for the kitchen. “I assume you still take too much sugar in your tea?”

“Your shoulder has begun to swell. Sit down, I’ve been trying to discover you for months, I might as well take advantage of you tidying my flat and deducing my thought processes from my margin notes and make you a cup of tea. Take off your jumper; I’ll see what your shoulder requires.”

“Forget the shoulder!”

“It would only be tedious and boring for you to trick me into answering all your questions whereas if you let me see your shoulder I’ll tell you everything you want to know.” He threw a flannel sheet that looked like it had been subjected to chemical burns at him. “If you’re feeling uselessly modest, use this.”

John scowled, but there was something underneath that tenuous cockiness. A real fear of rejection. And something dark and smouldering with pain. Before John knew what he was about he was pulling off his jumper and vest with great care and wrapping himself in the sheet. His gauze had been seeped through, but he couldn’t see any red. He sat at the kitchen table, trying not to blush. As soon as he was planted in his chair Sherlock pulled John’s clothes out of his arms and threw them on top of the refrigerator, looking far too pleased with himself. “There. You’re far too short to get to that without my stopping you and I have questions for you.”

“Are you holding me hostage by my modesty?”

“Why did you let Irene die so brutally?”

Surprise reshaped John’s face.

“You didn’t know?” Sherlock looked confused, pained, so horrifically disappointed before his face shuttered, eyes moving fast enough it must have been painful, expression transforming. “You knew, but Irene’s alive.” He sat down solidly. “Who was-?”

“Irene has always been able to make people do what she wants. To lose that is frightening. She’s never had to trust someone before. Moriarty’s first on the list of people trying to destroy her, but he seems to be distracted by a pissing contest with you.” John swallowed. “Do you need a little time?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said holding out little prescription pills and a glass of water. “Show me your shoulder.”

Habit made John obey, swallowing the pain pills down efficiently, gratefully, watching Sherlock’s face flicker back and forth. It was a bit like trying to decipher photographs with double exposure. When John set down the emptied glass and revealed his shoulder, he absolutely refused to feel awkward about it, refused to twitch and when the glancing knife wound over John’s sternum drew Sherlock’s attention and his fingertips, John refused to draw back like some flinching maiden.

It was red and shiny. Looked recent even though it was an incredibly old scar simply made new again by Grendel’s gun.

“It was an accident,” John spoke softly, not wanting to break into Sherlock’s mental processes. He meant to stay quiet, but there was something about Sherlock’s face.

“They didn’t mean to cut so deep,” Sherlock agreed, before leaving the strawberry redness of it to peel back the tape to reveal a great Betelgeuse sized scar, sprawling, screaming red, even as much as it had closed up and healed since John’s misadventure with Grendel’s gun. A delicate shiver made a circuit through Sherlock’s body, his face so young, so lost. “Your shoulder had to be reconstructed.”

“Not too much.”

“I’ve gathered by now that understatement when it comes to your own safety is your specialty, but stop. Please. I’ve worked on enough violent crimes and know enough police officers that I know this could have killed you. That you have something in your shoulder to repair the damage. I never would have met you. You would have disappeared and never been solved. No wonder you look so angry and tired all the time. What are you even doing wandering around London?”

John looked away. “There’s too much to do.”

While patching John up, Sherlock said nothing more, just ground his teeth and scowled at John’s scar, cleaning up the seepage and drying the still healing scar with a tenderness that made John breakdown. Almost fall apart. All the while, Sherlock watched, face so still, deducing everything he could pull out of John. He activated a heat pack and held it across John’s shoulder gently and before long John had wilted forward, leaning his forehead on Sherlock’s shoulder. It wasn’t a position that would be feasible long term, but for now it was comforting.

“I still want to interrogate you,” Sherlock murmured, not expecting a response. Tenderness curled around them. Peace, a dear familiar peace. John was so incredibly grateful for Sherlock he shuddered with it, a pained trembling breath. Gently Sherlock lifted his hand to rest on his spine. It felt like John had finally been recognized. Had finally returned home.

“Sherlock!” came a familiar voice from the sitting room. “I see you’ve straightened the place up good I was- Oh! Sorry mate-”

In an instant John was sitting upright, trying to collect himself. He had been fighting so long, scraping by so long, it seemed so stupid to let himself relax so much.

“Lestrade!” Sherlock snapped. “Will you go be tedious somewhere else for a moment?” He was on his feet in a moment, slamming the sliding kitchen door closed. After a moment Sherlock shook himself and went to the fridge to pull down John’s clothes from where he had thrown them. “I’ll help you redress. It will be difficult with your shoulder. Someday you’ll have to teach me your technique for sublimating pain. I’ve always wanted to spend some time in Tibet for that purpose.”

Still tense, John tried not to skitter away like a frightened animal, to cover as much of himself as possible while Sherlock helped him slide back into his clothes. The only trouble came when Sherlock discovered a small flare of burnt skin at his hip. It was from John’s now nonexistent college days, an accident in a lab, but now it looked little more than a few months old.

“Was this another accident?” Sherlock asked through gritted teeth. “Don’t bother looking nobly stoic at me. This was what had Mycroft so tense, wasn’t it? He figured out you were tortured for information. Of all the idiotic things, as if they could get you to talk.”

“We should go see what Lestrade wants,” John told him.

He just rolled his eyes, “I won’t swoon, I’ve seen torture before. Although it’s less troubling to consider when the victim is someone other than you.”

“Cheers.” 

“Try not to collapse under the weight of your sarcasm. You’re helping me at the crime scene.”

“You want me to help you at a crime scene?” John blinked up at him.

“Of course. You’re not to tell me the answer when you see it. I would appreciate figuring it out for myself.”

“Of course,” John smiled.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your romantic… thing,” Lestrade said awkwardly when they emerged, still looking a little put out at having the doors slammed closed in his face.

Flustering like a particularly well bred peacock, Sherlock straightened to his full height, but didn’t quite seem to know what to do when he got there.

“We’re not romantically involved,” John said evenly, the pills were starting to take effect. They were lovely, didn’t cloud up his brain. “Our relationship is platonic.”

“You’ve got a friend you didn’t tell me about?” the sudden fatherly friendliness was a change, not too sudden; Lestrade was always a little paternal with Sherlock, whether he noticed it or not.

“I have friends,” Sherlock sniffed, falling just as easily into the role of stroppy teenage son.

“It’s not so remarkable that people like Sherlock is it?”

“You’re related to John Watson,” the detective’s eyes went wide in shock before starting to tinge with anger. “You are aren’t you?”

“I feel I should tell you before you try to punch him that Dr. Watson is involved in activities that are so above even Mycroft’s pay grade that even telling you I can’t tell you puts you and your family in danger and if it makes you feel any better he was tortured and shot keeping John safe.” The tilt Sherlock’s chin had gone incredibly imperious, fierce, “Whatever horrible thing you’re thinking about him stop. He’s my friend and I trust him.” He swallowed. “And he’s coming to the crime scene.”

Lestrade took in the two of them. At John looking steadfast under scrutiny, trying not to show how little he liked his injuries paraded out and at Sherlock trying not to look nervous, or like Lestrade’s opinion mattered to him.

“I haven’t had enough coffee for this,” Lestrade said simply. “If you’re going to come then you should come. Anderson’s on forensics.”

That made Sherlock unhappy.

“I don’t suppose you have any crime scene experience?” Lestrade sighed in John’s general direction.

“Some,” John said simply, and then because Lestrade looked resigned to Sherlock and the peculiarities he attracted John added. “I have experience with violent deaths. And I’m a medical doctor.” Next to John, Sherlock was obviously mtaking mental notes.

“Sure,” Lestrade said. “Sure. Why not? Everyone come to the crime scene!”

“It’s alright. I can-” John started to say.

“No,” Sherlock said sharply, “It’s fine. It really is. I want you to come.”

The weight of Lestrade’s stare in the face of Sherlock’s anxiety was almost palpable.

“You might as well,” he said. “I’ve never seen Sherlock anxious to spend time with anyone before. I’d hate to deprive him.”

“He still needs an assistant doesn’t he?” John made his smile form naturally, the pained stiffness in his face relax. 

“Yeah,” he replied, watching the both of them carefully. “I suppose he does.”

When they arrived Sherlock’s excitement, his eagerness to show off, made John try fervently not to smile. At least until he saw the man slumped forward over his kitchen table (grandfather, enjoyed jazz and sweet food, lactose intolerant, poor relationship with son). He made himself focus on body, blank and clear from the usual blasting of sensory information, every thought, feeling, fear, dragging nails first across his brain. The body was the quietest thing in the room compared to the sentimentality of the old green patterned wall paper. The old wooden kitchen table. The delicate sentimentality in the care taken to preserve the second arm chair as if it were a religious idol. The fingerprints of the victim’s life had been spread across the position of the wooden chairs, the edges of the picture frames, the two placemats on the table of a man who lived alone, the careful handling of his record collection. This was the flat of a man who was cheerful, bright and devastatingly lonely, desperate for the past.

It almost made John want to weep. But there had been enough tears.

“Would you like to begin?” Sherlock gestured. John looked from Sherlock to Lestrade. Anderson and the rest of the forensic crew had disappeared conveniently. How opportune. Lestrade must have called ahead.

Quickly John went through the checklist in his head. Check nails, scent, neck, looks like strangulation but it isn’t really- not quite right, tongue swollen and discolored, smell of vomit under the smell of mouthwash. No defensive wounds either not that there would be. “Time of death less than six hours, poisoned over the past few weeks and then strangled before death to cover the poisoning, either could be the cause,” he said, looking at Sherlock, glowing with delight.

“Please, go on,” Sherlock grinned.

“He was lactose intolerant, although he didn’t keep a dairy free diet.”

“The killer didn’t know,” Sherlock beamed. “The poison was in dairy. He kept eating dairy and then throwing it up before the poison took effect.”

Lestrade turning to look at John, “Wait a moment-” he started.

Sherlock’s face broke into a grin, “Isn’t he magnificent? It took him between the door and the table to solve. Excellent work.” He moved to stand on the other side of the man’s body and examined the man’s neck, tilting his chin gently with two gloved fingers. “Do you know what it is?”

“There are a lot of poisons,” John shrugged. “But his gums and tongue are swollen and discolored.”

“Hmm.” Sherlock started to explore the man’s pockets.

Job done John stood up and went to go stand by the door.

“You really just figured that out?” Lestrade asked, eyebrows lifted.

“People with lactose intolerance who’ve been indulging have a subtle swelling in their face and neck. His breath smells of vomit and mouthwash and he’s not dressed like he’s ill. Vomiting is part of his everyday life; he’s learned to live with it, to not let it ruin his day. And he doesn’t have the initial signs at least of an eating disorder. He was poisoned a huge amount and then strangled because the killer was frightened, desperate; it was interfering with their perception of things. They were going to kill him once and for all. There’s more, but that’s Sherlock’s thing, the big reveal.”

“And so you put that together since you’ve been in the room,” Lestrade asks very slowly.

When else was John supposed to put it together? It wasn’t that hard.

“So, you’re a doctor?”

“Yes,” John said.

“I’ve finished the rest of it!” Sherlock announced, battering them both with a flood of deductions. Woman from the shape of the nails where they dug into the man’s neck. The murderer knew where the cleaning supplies were and had a key to the flat. Deduction after deduction flowing until Lestrade was left with the conclusion. The man had started dating the maid from the service he hired, and then when she got too serious he requested a different maid. It was a crime of passion.

When he finished John grinned and said “Incredible.”

Sherlock blinked at John in shock. “Did you know you did that out loud?

“Sorry,” John ducked his head, the sudden flash of familiarity hitting him hard.

“That’s … fine. But it’s not necessary. I mean, you don’t have to, compliment me I mean.”

John rolled his eyes, “It was incredible.”

The light shining out of Sherlock’s smile could probably be seen from space.

“I’ll have forensics finish the scene with the new information,” Lestrade said, giving the both of them a peculiar expression.

“Excellent,” Sherlock replied, still looking more cheerful than was natural, “we’ll get out of the way of their idiocy. When you want us we’ll be waiting outside.”

 

**Hey souse, is John with you? – BD**

**I’m sure he’s fine wherever he is.**

**And don’t call me souse.**

**He’s following after Sherlock then. That brat. – BD**


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.
> 
> This chapter is a bit exciting. And tramatic. There are mentions of child abuse in the second half of this chapter. If you don't want to read it that is perfectly fine and understandable, send my a message at thursdayplaid.tumblr.com or americanjedi.livejournal.com and I will give you a summary and all important fact revealed in this chapter so you don't have to read it.
> 
> Thank you to tentacle_love for betaing on time even though I got this chapter in late due to being a bit ill. I hope you enjoy!

When the case was finally over, officially, and they were in the taxi back to 221B, Sherlock kept staring at him. John threw him quick looks out of the corner of his eye, trying to figure out what he kept staring at.

“What?” he finally asked.

“You were very kind to that man’s son.”

“That wasn’t really being kind Sherlock that was just…” Just being decent? Just what was expected? Just being human. “He was in pain.” John looked out the window, tried not to be caught in Sherlock’s stare, the way Sherlock’s eyes peeled everything back.

“He didn’t even like his father.” Sherlock crossed his arms, leaning back, pouting loudly with every line of his body. His eyes were fixed on John’s face.

“You don’t always have to like someone to love them. You can want them to be better, to be a good person and still not like them at all.”

There was a jagged pause, “This case has nothing to do with my relationship with my father.” Sherlock’s reflection looked angry in the window.

 _Of course not,_ John didn’t say, _I’m fairly sure your father had affairs to force distance between himself and your mother, whereas the poor poisoned man had an affair to dull the pain of loss._ He didn’t say anything about love or the way some people pried it off of themselves with a crowbar and then beat it to death with the same. What was it Sherlock had told him once? Caring is not an advantage. He hadn’t heard anything other than oblique references to Sherlock’s childhood. But he had seen the way the Holmes brothers spoke of their mother, of comfort and happiness. Like children trying to fill the void of an absent father. He could see them - Mycroft especially - trying to become the man of the house, trying to stretch himself into the shape of an adult. Could see it in the cool way the Holmeses disparaged caring. A waning mother and Mycroft racing to fill the void, Sherlock desperate to please but somehow never getting it right. How Sherlock had at times treated the child John like a soap bubble and at others an adult. It surged, the long shadow cast between Sherlock’s childhood and adult life until his head was filled with static that he had to hold back with a hand to his face; rush of a thousand different words, implications, expressions, actions. He had accidentally ripped back the veil and seen the wounds on the underbelly of Sherlock’s childhood.

He breathed his way through it and turned back to Sherlock. Magnificent, dynamic Sherlock. Far less damaged than he assumed of himself. “Not everything I do is engineered to make you perform like a lab rat. Sometimes people are really bad about communicating in the face of loss so they lose track of each other and are angry because they’re alone and love because they understand why. He was just so-” John realized his voice had risen and fell silent, forcibly. The cabbie studiously didn’t look at them in the silence. “Doesn’t it ever make you mad, how much people hurt?” John looked away from Sherlock and his narrowed thoughtful eyes again. “Don’t you just want to scream at how worn down they are?”

“Do you see pain when you look at me?” Sherlock asked, a question that demanded John’s full attention. Once John was looking at him, trying to put all the words together, Sherlock laid a large hand on each on his cheeks, holding his head in place for observation. John couldn’t help sagging forward a little, just resting. “You look tired.”

The movement of John’s smile was captured under Sherlock’s hands, that fearless expression shifting beneath his palms. “I am tired.”

“What do you see that makes me special? What did John see?”

“Streetlights and lightening, danger, companionship, brilliant idiocy, and the most ridiculous strops. You think you’re so broken. But you are a marvel. A wondrous marvel. No star will ever shine like you again. Not ever. Also you’re a bit incompetent at keeping yourself alive. There is a certain appeal in that for someone who likes to stay busy.”

Sherlock’s face was locked down, tied tightly blank, and welded shut. He looked at John. “I don’t know what to do with you. I don’t think you’re real sometimes. I don’t think things are you are meant to be real.”

“Then the feeling’s mutual,” John said with his tired smile.

“I leaving to assist Irene as soon as we get home.”

“I’m sure she’ll appreciate it,” John told him. He had mixed feelings about Irene; there was a discomfort in how similarly she and Sherlock bore their hairline fractures. Sherlock was forewarned now though, hopefully that would be enough to keep he from doing something ridiculous. More ridiculous than he usually did.

“I’m not going to stop looking for John.”

“That’s fine too,” John answered.

Sherlock just stared, took back his hands, and turned to stare straight ahead with his fingers steepled under his chin until the taxi came to a stop. Absently, Sherlock paid, wandering into 221B. John only smiled and followed. At the door to Sherlock’s room John watched as he carefully retrieved a messenger bag and started opening and closing drawers. “Is this another test? You haven’t told me where she is yet.”

“No,” John said as he pulled out his phone and texted Sherlock the coordinates. 

“If it’s not a test then what is it? You’re just sending me her exact location for no reason?”

“No,” John smiled. “Not for no reason.”

“What about John? Was that not a test too?”

“John-” he had to stop. “John and I have experienced different things in our own times. He thought he could feel happy and safe here. And he did.”

There was a minute tremor in Sherlock’s hands as he held his messenger bag. He scowled down at them as if to force them still by will alone. “I should go,” he finally said.

Going to stand in the living room to let Sherlock compose himself, John took a moment to look at the straightened living room. The two chairs. Everything almost the same as it had been. A sound from the doorway startled him, a low animal snarl. Starting, John turned, free arm lifting, falling into a fighting stance. In the doorway stood Bad Davey, face paler than it had been when he was shot, freckles standing out like blood spray across his face. There was a greyness to him, the sleek shine to him missing. Bad Davey swayed slightly and caught himself just a moment too late, jerking back upright.

Bad Davey looked absolutely feral, his beautiful grace melted away into brutality.

Sherlock appeared in the hall leading back his room, looking between John and Bad Davey, looking like he was about to say something.

“Shut your mouth,” Bad Davey snarled, teeth glistening and deadly. When Sherlock opened his mouth Bad Davey pulled back his lips, salivating to rip Sherlock apart between his teeth. “So help me,” he spoke clearly; a crystal clarity that cut, divided the air of 221B on either side of him. John and Sherlock might as well have been in two different rooms. John was very afraid for Sherlock. So, it appeared, was Sherlock. It looked fairly certain Bad Davey was on the very edge of psychosis. 

Carefully, John stood, chin up, eyes serious. This was the sort of feral animal that ripped itself to shreds, desperation making all other agonies mute. He made a soft seeking sound, the kind one might to a baby trying to decide to wake up. Bad Davey’s attention _jerked_ to John. 

He took a half step toward John, and then back.

He considered. Snarled at Sherlock.

Looked at John.

One step.

Then another.

Then he rushed forward letting John pull him down against him on the sofa.

With Davey’s snarling, grappling, grabbing, and pulling closer, closer, closer, it must have appeared he was trying to hurt John. Quickly John flicked his eyes up to Sherlock’s, held his gaze, looked over at the door.

Bad Davey took a breath like a saw going through his ribs. He made a weak _hhna_ sound as he wept softly into the wool of John’s jumper’s neck. The sobbing sound Davey was making wasn’t natural; wasn’t natural for Bad Davey who was all ravaging flame and kisses with razor blades behind them, street justice and merciful pain. 

It wasn’t a sound natural to anyone. Less of a weeping sound and more the noise someone might make when trying to breathe while their lungs were ripped out. His long, strong fingers _dug_ into John, holding him close, _”Daddy.”_ The word ripped itself out of him, jagged, bleeding. _“Please._ Watson. Please. I- I don’t-“ 

“Shh,” John said. He was frightened, not sure what he should do. He pulled his arms tight around Davey and rocked him, held tight and rocked him through the keening agony. 

When it was all done and Bad Davey had explained what had happened John left him to furiously clean his face and collect himself in the bathroom. Sherlock was standing in the hall waiting, watching John’s face very carefully. “I didn’t think he knew how to cry,” he said.

“He would have killed you instead if you’d given him the chance,” John replied sharply. He had to stop and work his jaw, muscle flexing to calm himself again. To hold back the rage that was snarling savage behind his ribs. “I’d appreciate you not mentioning this incident again to him or anyone.”

“You’re furious.”

It took a deep breath and parade rest before he could speak again. “I am.”

“What could have even-? I mean, aren’t people supposed to offer help in situations like these?”

John considered him, tension roaring through his body. “He received a call. His two best friends have just been involved in murder suicide. I need to call Tim to arrange for something.”

“Arrange for what?” Sherlock asked quickly.

“It’s not safe for Roost to be around Davey right now. He hasn’t learned to push him back yet; he just sort of takes it.”

“He can stay here,” Sherlock said quickly, drawing a key out of his pocket. He grimaced, “Tim too I suppose if he has to as well.”

Nodding John pocketed it. “Thank you. Roost will probably love your flat, it’s the sort of place he’d adore. If she’s moved I’ll tell you.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock said simply, looking anxious to say something else, but moving still lipped to the front door. Away to _assist Irene._

 

It took a while for Bad Davey to be settled back down again. They fought a bit, but Bad Davey didn’t draw a knife so John supposed he wasn’t really serious about it. Tim had picked up Roost and sent John several texts, some of which were probably from Roost since they were facts about the liver. Once they got back to Davey’s apartment he headed into the depths, leaving John to shut the door and get tumblers so Davey wouldn’t drink himself dead from the bottle. 

Something wasn’t right about the whole situation. John was sure of nothing less than eternal happiness for Elise and Hilton forever. He didn’t think there was anything that could get her to shoot Hilton. She was so smart, so savvy. The timing was so wrong for so many reasons. So newly married, Davey still so wounded about it all… 

“Stop thinking about it,” Bad Davey said, mouth drooping down in a strange little frown. He was carrying three bottles. John would have to stay sober enough to monitor how much Davey drank. “I can hear you thinking about it.”

John didn’t tell him it would be fine. Nothing would be fine.

Bad Davey was a quieter drunk than John expected, all steady, business-like, slow decimation of high proof alcohol while methodically opening and closing a well sharpened knife. John said nothing, carefully watched Davey, but other than that was simply an audience to his heartbreak. The heartbreak of possibility that would never be. That Davey could never allow. The most precious person in his life let go, without a word spoken for her happiness. If it was simply a matter of sexual drive that would be one thing. But that wasn’t the end of it.

Eventually they moved, sitting on the thickly carpeted floor by the massive picture window. Davey looked at him. Eyes faded, worn out until whatever had been holding his words in all these years snapped like old cloth. 

“When I was twelve I killed my father. I bashed his head in with a fireplace poker.”

John put down his tumbler.

“I’m not sorry,” Bad Davey whispered. “I refuse to be sorry. He wasn’t good to me. That’s not why I ruin things, that’s just me. But he wasn’t good to me. I didn’t much care. I didn’t like him as much as I like you and he was away at business a lot. I only saw him at dinners and when he-”

The trajectory of Davey’s tumbler when he threw it was like a path of starlight, city lights catching on every crystal cut edge. Whiskey turning into a curlicue of faint gold. 

The dusk outside the window was grey and pale as a corpse.

“I was getting too old, but Roost was just the right age. When Mummy figured it out – it was in one of her few lucid moments – she lied and said it was a break in. I don’t think she liked him much either. She was pressured into marrying him too young, to have children too soon. She never even picked up Roost as a baby unless she had to for pictures. Had her eyes on some patrician nosed politician when she was but a lass but he’d run off to fight the communists or whatever it was that politicians used to do and alas there went her chance at happiness.

“I’m so old Johnny. _I’m just so old_.” He pressed his fingertips ruthlessly against his closed eyes; the knife far too close to Davey’s face for John’s comfort. “I don’t know what Roost remembered, when he grew up. He tried to solve crimes so maybe he remembered a little bit.”

“Davey,” John said carefully, “What are you talking about? Roost is fourteen.”

“He’s not,” Davey croaked. “He’s not.”

The city lights seemed to be watching them, slowly turning on at their backs. A precipice open and glaring at them both. 

“He was working this one case and I was annoyed with him. He never listened to me. He was supposed to have back up, but his pretty little assistant was off getting married and I was annoyed. There was this madman, Dr. Grendel, had this idiotic machine that shouldn’t have worked.”

The breath John sucked in seemed to stun them both into temporary silence. Their faces twisted in reflections of horror; horror remembered and horror realized. The sight of Davey crying, shaking, almost silently sent John to the very edge of a panic attack, his toes hanging over the drop into panic. 

“I was able to grab him and I just didn’t let go. I just held on to him and held on to him and when we landed again he was so small, just like he had been with the exact same bruises and-” John listened to the desperate crack of Davey’s voice. “There was nothing behind his eyes, he was just a memory I couldn’t let go of, he just _stared_ murmuring to himself. I turned my brother into nothing more than a little shell with little bits and bobs rattling around inside. I couldn’t let him go. I thought if I learned to let him go then… I didn’t even know if he was real until you came.”

“Davey-” John breathed out and Bad Davey _lunged_ at him, biting at his neck, but catching mostly collar. John swung an elbow, never one to let Davey push him around. Davey growled, aggrieved and tried to dig his nails into him. “None of that,” John barked and punched him in the hip.

Yowling, Davey scrambled away, face like a spotted opal in the lights of London between his tear tracks and freckles. “What else am I meant to do?”

“Stop trying to hit me, I won’t put up with it. I’m not your punching bag.”

Dropping down from his crouch Davey lay on his belly, posture passive, but eyes far too clever.

“You’re like me then,” John said, falling back to lie on the carpet. He could see Davey creeping closer out of the corner of his eye. “The both of you. Why didn’t you say something earlier, when you realized?”

Davey’s head rested on John’s stomach in a way that clearly telegraphed he had claimed that space and would turn to violence to keep it. Because he was Bad Davey of course. “I didn’t remember a lot of it until you came sniffing around. It’s been quite a few years, and I’ve been busy.”

John looked at him.

“I didn’t want to remember I let my brother burn up and replaced him with a memory. I don’t think he remembers. I don’t want him to remember.”

“He doesn’t seem like a memory, he seems like his own person.”

Davey pressed his cheek to John’s ribs thoughtfully, as if counting the number of them. “Now he does, I think it was just hiding behind everything. I’ve never slept this close to someone before.”

“Are you falling asleep?”

Davey linked their fingers together. “I know what you’re thinking. It’s annoying, _my poor precious little love._ It’d make me want to peel my face off a great deal less if you knew less of my nature, if you were deluded.”

“Precise I am a little. I can’t help being fond of you. The drugs do piss me off.”

Davey leaned up enough to put his ear close enough to John’s heart to hear. “You unbearable little brat. I don’t want to talk about this anymore tonight. I just don’t, I’ll slit your throat.”

John looked down at him.

To prove his point Davey moved his razor blade out from under his tongue and held it precisely for John to see.

“I love you Davey.”

Davey seemed for a moment to swallow the blade down, but John could see a shadow of a dull glint in the dark curve of Davey’s mouth. “I know. That’s why you’re planning what you’re planning. You think I don’t know.” He laid his head down again. “I know everything.”

In the morning light John woke to a tangle of Bad Davey clinging to him and baring his teeth in his sleep. Before he moved and was murdered John let out a large puff of air that had Bad Davey up, yanking John absently by his jumper and blinking lopsidedly with a knife in one hand. Once he knew what he was about he winced powerfully. “You let me get too drunk.”

“You seemed coherent enough.”

“I’m Bad Davey,” he said sharply and cut a patch out of John’s jumper with a jerk of his knife. That was just annoying. “I’m hung over,” he said mournfully and wandered off, bit of jumper still gripped in one hand.

John should feel absolutely bottomed out after last night, completely devastated, but hope was still holding on, sad and worn at the edges, but tied tightly. He wasn’t sure what to feel to be honest.

 

**Things are a bit tense this morning. BD and I are okay. I’ll call you in a little bit to say good morning. – W**

**After you do can you leave me a message and say you love me so I can listen to it? – R**

**Of course, darling. Tell Tim to do something fun with you today. – W**

**OK <3 – R**

**Did you know that pig and humans of a similar size usually have a similarly sized heart and pumping capacity? –R**


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello dears! This the longest chapter yet, and a quick warning for mental instability and very mild body horror. The beta is tentacle_love, my tumblr is thursdayplaid.tumblr.com, and here is the chapter as early as I promised. Have fun!

Godfrey Norton was aware of his tendency to be ridiculously loud with his emotions. In the courtroom he controlled it, let his chronic over-emoting out by inches to draw in the judge, the jury, whoever stood in his way. Right now he knew what he projected was full-blooded irritation at being left in the middle of the night in a desert precariously close to a warzone with only a truck and his big ole babies for company. He liked his big old babies, giant puppies that loved loving on him as much as they were really amazing at ripping out people’s throats. But the thought of them going against someone with real artillery, not just some angry abusive ex-husband or smugglers with horrible hygiene made his stomach clench in real terror.

The only thing keeping him here, the place too close to a warzone, was the way Auntie had asked him, politely, prettily, and oh so soberly. It wasn’t Godfrey’s thing to mention what might have been borderline alcoholism, but he couldn’t help wanting to do something to help, to celebrate Auntie’s new life of sobriety. Positive reinforcement or something equally ridiculous. Not that Auntie would notice as he divided his time between being a shorter than normal version of a tragic hero, getting himself in situations where instead of leaping from helicopters he just saved Russian orphans and caught colds. Pathetic was what Auntie was when he wasn’t busy being prim and proper.

Godfrey was about to just give it up and head off into the desert before someone noticed him when two robed figures came running around the corner of the compound.

They were arguing. Beautiful. They just argued right up to him, not even looking at the doors he conveniently opened for them. 

Arguing about ringtones.

“Can you two cut the running commentary on things that have absolutely no connection to whether or not we get shot and die and get in the car?” Godfrey projected with his courtroom voice with a beatific expression on his face. One of his dogs was leaning against his shoulder, which was pretty much the same as having a wall collapsed affectionately on him. But really? Could he say no to his big darling puppy? 

They finally acknowledged him. Really acknowledged him.

He smiled his snooty smile at them. “Tim’s crazy brother sent me to pick you two up, but I don’t like Tim’s crazy brother enough to make an intimate acquaintance with a bullet so the two of you can argue over who’s prettier. This is your ride. Get your rears into the car.”

“We’re just supposed to trust you?” the tall one said.

“You can do whatever you want, but this train is leaving the station as soon as I’m in it,” he whistled his puppies in, big gangly things they were, sitting politely in place. 

The shorter of the two, he hadn’t been sure they weren’t both women until the tall one spoke, looked up, made a face and followed Pickle in. The taller one finally got over himself and hopped in after her. Auntie, bless his heart, had only given a brief rundown of what was going on, there were a few irritating holes in Godfrey’s knowledge.

“What lovely dogs,” the woman made a slight face, “What are their names?”

“The girl up here is Susie, she’s my best girl, and back there is Pickle. Don’t feed him anything, or he’ll beg endlessly.” His eyes kept twitching to the mirror, he should be okay driving by the stars, a dark truck on the night darkened sand, but he still worried.

“Just the sort of man she prefers,” the tall one said with a drawl. “You’re not military, how did you end up with an armoured car.”

Godfrey took the risk of looking over his shoulder to wink at him, “I know what people want.” He usually relied on a stupefying mixture of unstoppable cheer, layered naïveté, and weaponized optimism. It seemed to have hit its mark this time.

They were taken aback, blinking up at him in the dark. The woman finally shook her surprise off enough to rest a hand on his shoulder. “Oh? What did this person want?”

“More Twinkies than you could drown in,” he grinned which made her grin back in delight, sleek and sweet as a sphinx.

“I suppose you have a plan other than bribing military personnel with sponge cake?” she asked.

“I’m glad you asked,” he told her, pressing just a little bit harder on the gas. “We’re going to get married.”

She blinked and straightened up, “We’re going to what?” 

“Only fake married, although the forgeries are gorgeous. Just so you know, you were born in New Jersey, and lived with European family for a while. All those nasty storms destroyed the other copy of your birth certificate. How tragic. The paperwork will slow down anyone who attempts to export you and we’ll have a bit of a fake past made up and you’ll be good as gold.”

“I should tell you, I don’t really like men,” she said, curling her lips up in her Cleopatra smile and patting him on the arm twice. It was a beautifully done power play, too patronizing to garner immediate reasonable response, to superficially kind to broke anger without guilt, too subtle to do anything but sting, too graceful to escape appreciation.

Godfrey with his eyes as wide and guileless as a child patted her gently on the arm in reply, “Don’t worry, generally speaking neither do I. Already we have something in common.”

“And you don’t see that as a problem?”

“Seeing as we don’t really know each other and it’s a fake marriage I don’t suppose it will be. I’m hardly going to… inconvenience you and you have no interest in interest in me, so I don’t see as it’ll have much effect either way. You’re smart and a quick conversationalist, so as long as you don’t use up all the hot water we should be great roommates. I do expect you not to do anything too inconsistent with our cover story, because where I live inconsistency brings gossip, gossip brings notice, and notice makes me risking my life in a desert rather moot.”

The tall one suddenly shifted and spoke, “I should tell you,” “Before you go any farther that what got her into this mess was acquiring information on people for the purpose of getting them to do whatever she’d like and occasional bit of blackmail against the British Government.”

“The moment he knocked on my door,” she snapped, looking at the tall one, “his whole plan was to trick me with a ridiculous vicar disguise and trick me into telling him where the phone I keep all my private information was. What did he think would happen to me without any leverage? Should I have swooned into his arms so he could prove how wonderful and clever he is? He enjoyed the idea of outsmarting someone who beat people for a living, he enjoyed finally stealing my phone, loved figuring out the password. Loved the idea of winning far more than he ever liked me. They were going to kill me.”

“You overreached.”

“It’s allowed.”

“I just saved her life!”

“He risked it first!”

“Hey! We are all above the age of five. There will be no tattle telling.” Godfrey really needed to keep his eyes where he needed them. “And for the record, stealing a woman’s stuff is not okay. And it’s really bad double standard, when you thought you had the upper hand over her, _oh it’s all tea and biscuits._ ”

“I don’t sound like that,” the tall one snorted.

“Do record yourself sometime,” Godfrey answered. “But when she used power over you to try to protect herself from people who wanted her a bit dead, _oh no_ , not thinking of her own safety more than your masculine pride.”

“It was more than that,” he said sharply.

“You’re a butt,” Godfrey answered. “You’re both butts. Accept the butt and move on.”

They didn’t seem to know what to do with being called butts. Being a brilliant lawyer didn’t exclude Godfrey from calling people out from time to time.

“It was not my intention to begin arguing with you. I was concerned for your welfare,” the tall one finally amended.

“I can be angry and impressed by your dramatic timing simultaneously,” she allowed.

“You obviously like each other enough to dislike each other,” Godfrey added. “So play nice until we get to base, I have a bit to drive yet and I don’t think you’ll like what will happen if I have to pull this car over. There will be sorrow. And weeping. And sunburn once the morning hits. And a bill the likes of which you have never seen. It will put you into such shock scientists will think you’re an earthquake.”

The both of them were just staring at him with a sort of wonderment. Godfrey ignored them to smooth down his mustache with his fingers.

“I think,” the woman said slowly, a strange sort of something behind her eyes and a hand on Godfrey’s shoulder. “That since we’re married, I suppose you should call me Irene.”

 

John vaguely remembered getting up some time in the night after Davey had rolled away. When he had emptied what his bladder he retreated to the living room and texted with Roost, maybe talking to him before passing out on the sofa. Unless that was a dream. He woke to the sound of his phone vibrating against his breast bone and his bottle of pain pills in the other hand. According to the number of pills, he hadn’t taken any, so he obliged himself of dry swallowing down two and not immediately threatening whoever was calling him.

“John,” came Tim’s voice from somewhere by his ear. “John, John, John, _John_.”

_”What?”_

“You’re falling back to sleep.”

“I know I am.”

“You asked me to check up on what’s going with Elsie and Hilton. Wake up right now.”

Sluggishly John struggled toward consciousness.

“Wake up John. Talk to me. You can’t have had that much to drink.”

“I haven’t been sleeping that well and I was up late last night. And I mixed pain pills and alcohol,” John admitted. He shook himself, making himself sit up.

“Well, you’re in idiot. But you’re an idiot that was right. There was something weird going on with Elsie and Hilton. I couldn’t find anything in the police files I looked through that showed that someone else had been on scene, but there was some serious misinformation, so I can’t tell for sure.”

“Corrupt police?” John asked. His shoulder kept dully thudding, strained from all that messing about in Sherlock’s apartment and then the brilliant idea of sleeping on the floor with a grown man lounging over him.

“I can’t tell from here, but there were definitely issues with the paramedics. When they told the police the two had died, that was what Davey’s plant at the resort had heard. Both Elsie and Hilton are alive. Elsie died and was revived twice on the way to hospital and is currently in a coma. Hilton was shot in the lower back and is now drugged to prevent the pain. He’s scheduled for some sort of scan right now and then some medical acronym in Italian and after that possibly surgery I think? Before they could be hustled who knows where one of the doctors noticed something was off. I threw together a vaguely authoritative sounding governmental agency and posted arrests for charges of terrorism on the ambulance team until we figure out what they were planning on doing.”

“Keeping her alive to blackmail Davey with,” John said quietly, scrubbing his face. If they were keeping Hilton under for pain management it didn’t look good for him either, but at least he hadn’t been rushed into emergency surgery. “Or something worse. Are you sure it’s them?”

“I jumped from their Wi-Fi network to their security system. I have them on camera and access to a computer program with their heartbeats and such. I can send you their medical information.”

“Not quite yet,” John breathed out, falling back, relief making him supine, his neck relaxed into vulnerability. “They’re alive? Davey’s plant said Elsie shot herself in the head.”

Tim was the sort of quiet he was when he was trying to find the right words to say. “She tried, but her aim was off. It’s not pretty. The bullet went in at an angle and didn’t enter the brain if I’m translating the Italian correctly. I saw her… it… She’s going to have a large scar.”

“Do they know yet if she’ll have permanent brain damage?” Brain damage didn’t even mean things were insurmountable. Elsie had always been magnificent, and John had known many soldiers who overcame memory loss, aphasia, and loss of muscle function after TBI with the proper therapy.

“I wish I could give you more information. It’s… bad. I can hardly understand half of what the doctors are writing about it, but I know it’s really bad. Inspector Lestrade was on holiday in France, I’ve set him up with some French officers for expediency. He should keep the two of them safe until you get there.” Another pause weighed heavy on the line. “I’m sorry John. I know you were very fond of her. And Davey too. I can’t stand him, but I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Don’t let him drink too much.”

Standing up, John hurried his way into Davey’s room, pulling out a change of clothes. “I won’t. Thank you Tim. I owe you so much for this.”

“You already owe me amounts unimaginable for putting up with you. You can count this as a gift.” He rambled on, voice low, soothing as John dressed himself quickly.

“Could you do something for me?” John asked, standing in the door of the living room, looking at the half obscured fetal position of Bad Davey’s body, as if of a corpse caught curled and half revealed behind the sofa.

“Yeah,” Tim answered quickly.

“Call Norton and tell him to drop Sherlock off at the villa where the Cubbits were staying. I want him on this case.”

“I’ll take care of it. Just- You’re not planning anything are you?”

“What do you mean?” John said, distracted by wondering how to wake up Bad Davey without getting murdered.

“When you were small you stayed out of everyone’s way, you avoided the CCTV, you never told anyone anything. And now you’ve going to weddings, talking to every one you can get your hands on. You went on a chase with Sherlock yesterday.”

John was glad Tim couldn’t see his face, “The only thing I’m planning is to get Davey up and to Elsie’s bedside. I spent most of the wedding keeping Roost from overdosing on tarts and cake. I haven’t told anyone anything, and as far as the case goes I wanted to see how Sherlock was doing. The appearance will calm Sherlock down from searching so hard so me. And as far as the CCTV goes, I had the benefit of hiding behind a tall friend with an impressive coat. I’d be surprised if anyone got a good shot of my heel never mind my face.”

“You’d tell me if you were going to do something.”

“If there was anything you needed to know I would tell you,” John reassured him, resting calmly in the truth of what he said.

“I thought I’d just check. I’ll arrange for a flight and I’ll send you the information once it’s settled. Don’t be a git.”

“You too,” John said, ringing off. After a deep and steadying breath he stomped hard, twice on the floor. Davey sprung up suddenly into a crouch, snarling, not even fully awake yet. “Davey,” John said in his _we may have to take that leg, private_ voice. “Davey you need to wake up and get dressed.”

“There’s no reason to get up and get dressed. There’s no reason for anything.”

“Davey they’re alive, at least for now. Davey, Elsie and Hilton are alive, but Elsie may not last for very long.”

“What?” Pain cracked open that one word, split it open and bleeding so that all the startled hope despite hopelessness fluttered weakly, not quite dying in the midst of it.

“Someone lied, falsified information. They’re not dead, but they’re not well off,” he took a deep breath and looked, steadying at Davey. “Elise’s alive right now. But if we don’t leave soon there’s a chance she’ll die before we get there. The human body could survive things one couldn’t imagine. But it can be very delicate. I need you to get up and get dressed so you can go sit by her.”

John thought of Tim, how much he would have given to sit by his wife before she died. Even if she had no idea who he was. Davey looked like he’d been on the wrong side of an oncoming lorry but he clawed his way to his feet, pulling off his clothes and reaching for the gray suit draped over one of John’s arms. “Hilton?”

“They’re taking him in for scans. It’ll probably be surgery, but it’ll be delicate business. The doctor will be able to tell you more once we get there.” He left to give Davey some privacy, making tea in the kitchen.

“How did you find this out?” Davey said, appearing in the door way, buttoning up his waistcoat and then rebuttoning it.

“I had a feeling something wasn’t right. I had Tim look into it.”

“And they’re alive?” Davey’s face was doing something terrible.

“Yes.” In one hand was a travel mug of tea. It seemed such a small thing to offer in the face of this.

For a moment Davey looked young and old and terrible and so very vulnerable. “We should go then.”

With great enthusiasm Davey hooked an arm through John’s and dragged him down to the elevator, texting as they went. At the front of the fancy flats was the shark-eyed driver pulling into position, tires squealing; he leapt from the car, out of breath, to open the door for them. John gave him the address. He didn’t reach out to Davey who was kneading his fingers deep into the crook of John’s elbow, staring out the window, teeth half bared. Then there was the plane, the same one that had picked up John and Roost with the same professional flight attendant as before. She stayed out of the middle of Davey’s frantic pacing.

They were almost to Italy, the little resort town with the rented villa for Elsie and Hilton’s honeymoon, when Davey spun toward John. Frantic energy hungry for an outlet. “Someone did this to them. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. Someone did this to them.”

John had come to the same conclusion. Had measured out the possibilities in his mind and considered. Who might know enough about Davey, know his few weaknesses well enough to try and strike at them. The list was a narrow one. Half of the criminal underworld was too afraid of Bad Davey to do anything, the other half completely underestimated him. Even the great Holmes brothers completely underestimated him, considered him nothing more than a small time drug pusher who talked big. There was a gift Davey had, to control the way people perceived things. He knew where to pull and push so people forgot, disregarded. He arranged the London underworld, set police officers and criminals up on his great chess board, amputated the legs out from under the great sprawling spider that was Moriarty and no one noticed it was happening. “I don’t want you to get involved with that.”

Lunging forward, Davey planted his arms on either side of John, pinning John in and watching him carefully. “You don’t get to tell me what to do, not with this.”

“Someone clever, clever enough to find a blind spot, wants to destroy you,” John tried to say very calmly. Very reasonably. He could feel an angry tick in his jaw. “And someone clever enough for that would put a plan in place so you’d be destroyed whether Hilton and Elsie died or not. They wanted to find a way to make you self-destruct. Either they died and you start numbing yourself until you’re not a threat anymore or they live and you end up losing them by becoming a murderer.”

The only response was a snarl, a show of dominance.

“You know it’s true. When you think about it you know it’s true. It’s so brilliant it doesn’t matter how obvious it is.”

His hands flexed, they both could see how his anguish made him wild, vulnerable.

“I’ve called Sherlock in to take care of things. You might hate him for what he has, but even you can admit he’s brilliant at this sort of them. You don’t need to do anything. Just stay with Elsie and Hilton. Don’t let someone drag you around by the neck. You deserve better than that.”

Wordlessly Davey retreated into the seat across from John’s. His face was set away, out the window, fingers curling loosely together. All of John’s bravado left him in a heap. He didn’t know what to do. What he would have done if Davey’s willingness to rip someone apart had superseded what Hilton and Elsie were to him. 

The flight attendant had escaped somewhere so John closed his eyes and tried not to let the puzzle box of Davey’s feelings splinter open against the tender flesh of his brain. Tried not to feel the half despairing madness over take him.

Finally Davey turned, looked at John until the weight of his gaze demanded he look back. He saw the cool stillness of Davey’s face as he sat. It was like a pond, which at the right angle was as reflective and unsurpassable as the surface of a mirror irrespective of what may lie beneath. Davey’s shifted slightly and a view from the wrong angle came through revealing a tiger, a bear, a cliff that cut off to fall, fall, fall in ages of cutting freezing wind before the drop to the hungry uneven teeth of the rocks below. John stood on that precipice and waited for Davey to speak. 

For a moment Davey pressed his eyes closed before opening them again. It was close and careful and measured. He spoke calmly, moving in what seemed like slow motion under the weight of his great restraint. “Fine. Take care of this. I want this solved. I want this solved quickly. I do not want to be bothered with the results. I just want it done.”

“It will be,” John told him calmly.

No more was said for the rest of the trip, except an apology to the rigidly professional flight attendant, and the recitation of the address of the hospital, both spoken by John. Once they got there, John waved around the vague law enforcement agency Tim had invented to boss police around and got Davey in to see Elsie before Inspector Lestrade could arrive and demand answers.

“You!” came the sound of Lestrade’s voice, projecting. “Dr. Watson. What is this about?” He looked tired, irritated, and ready to change out of yesterday’s clothes. “I demand to know why I was called out of the middle of a holiday to some little resort town in Italy with _French_ officers – one of which is a magnificent conspiracy theorist – and told to stand guard over the victims of a murder-suicide neither myself or my borrowed constables can investigate because I’m English and they’re French and the crime scene belongs to the Italians!”

“ _Pardon_ ,” said a woman John assumed was one of the French constables. She was short and broad with the look of someone constantly staring far into the distance. “If I may, is this about the bombings?”

“Bombings?” said Lestrade. “What bombings?”

“It is because I was on probation for working on a possible connection between three recent bombings in the Paris area of some flats, of a laboratory, and of the small primary school for boys with no parents. I told my superior officers it was connected to bombings that have happened all across Europe. They thought I was not correct. But they are from London, and London has also had some bombings lately. I had an informant, Mn. Edward Porlock who has given me information that a man by the name of Moriarty is involved in these heinous acts and I will not rest until I find the truth.” She clenched one hand over her heart. “Truth, it is my only food. Justice my only love.”

“How long have you been awake constable?” Lestrade asked, looking at her, then at John. A crease of worry deep between his eyebrows.

“No more than four days,” she said still staring into the distance. “I have been awake longer before. It is no trouble. I’m Dubugue by the way, unlikely to be an inspector now, or constable again. But the pursuit of right and wrong is satisfaction enough if this is to be my last case.”

“Perhaps we should find a private room and share some information.”

“The bombings were Moriarty, yeah,” Lestrade said once they were settled. “But from what I’ve gathered, he’s not just about mass destruction. He does stuff to show off.” He returned John’s considering look, “I’m smarter than Sherlock gives me credit for. This Moriarty bloke, what does he have to gain from all this… blowing things up. And children, why’s he always going after children?”

“Well,” Dubugue said, eyes still unfocused. “According to the Englishman, Porlock, Moriarty has always been not all sane. But it has been the functioning madness, the brilliance that is more than normal thought. But after he lost his second in command he began to change. To lose the focus. He has made a new partnership with someone who gives to him the information and the jobs. Now I look at the timeline,” she pointed to a spot on the table. “Here is the bombing of the schools, the orphans. This is a firebomb. Always the burning, also, I believe something with a laboratory. It is hard to find. Then here, the second in command is killed. Before this Moriarty has used only the semtex. Now after this all of the bombings, they are with the semtex.”

“So the original bomber has joined up with Moriarty,” Lestrade said. “And now he’s providing the fire power. But why?”

“Because the firebomber is losing resources, is weakening,” John gave his part. “All he has is information, which is luckily all Moriarty wants. Information about my family. In the next few-”

“Doctor Watson to the front desk!” came over the intercom, English heavily accented. “It is an emergency. Doctor Watson, please come immediately to the front desk.”

Visions of Davey gone mad danced through John’s head. “I’m really very sorry, but I should go see about that. I’ll be back as soon as things are dealt with.” He ran down the hall to a front desk where a nurse was standing, watching.

“Dr. Watson?” she asked him as he pushed awkwardly between hospital staff to lean against the desk.

“Yes?”

“It is a family emergency, here.” She held out the phone to him, which he took with some trepidation, but the voice on the other end was expected. Everything in its proper time. 

“I won’t say it’s good to hear from you in these circumstances,” he answered while the nurse studiously ignored him. “No I understand. A black car? I understand completely.”

He handed back the phone and straightened his shoulders, chin up, back straight.

“Thank you,” he told the nurse. “If you don’t mind. My young associate accidentally switched phones with me.” John fiddled with his phone a moment before setting on the nurses’ station desk, imagining he could feel the inscription through the case. _Harry, Clara and three kisses._ “Could you return this to him please?”

“Of course. Should I tell him you’ve gone?”

“No, I’ve just texted him. I really must go. Thank you again.”

He walked out the front door, felt the sun. Tried not to shiver. There was a black car waiting in the front of the car park. Black and smooth. There was something radiating in it that made John violent and furious. Someone was already in the back seat. He had considered, planned, made himself ready. He couldn’t go back now. John opened the door to look inside. The man there considered John and made a grumbling, gnarling, growling sound, wet and ripping that made John nauseous.

John got inside the car, looking straight ahead at the thick privacy glass that separated the back seat from the driver. “Good afternoon Dr. Grendel.”

“Thought you were so clever! Found you. Think you’re so sneaky. I found you. I saw, the universe keeps looking away. I find everything, see everything. Tricked you, I made a plan. Your pretty little boy is going to fall to pieces and then I’ll pull you into pieces too.” Grendel lunged forward, every intention apparently to rip off John’s face. They struggled for a short while, Grendel’s hands slick with sweat and something else, too viscous, scrambled over John’s. Left a big wet streak across John wrist. As jerkingly as he’d started, Grendel then went still, listening to some subsonic strain and collapsed back to his side of the seat panting lightly. 

“Think you’re clever. Think you can protect them. They’re like wet paper. I’ll find them one by one, put them in a room. Find them out. I’m going to _ruin_ them,” Grendel snarled, lips wet, teeth tinged pink. The top of his ear was crusted in red and brown from where he had clawed at it. It looked like it was coming away from his head a little.

John said nothing.

“I’ll boil them, rip them, rend them, press my teeth into their wet, soft bellies until they scream at the horror of it. Break them. Win them. Win everything.”

John realized he had been scratching at his wrist and stopped before he broke the skin.

“I’m going to burn it, burn everything, burn a trough in the world to throw all the bodies in. And I’ll hold you close,” he wrapped his arms around himself, muscles tense enough to splinter, fingers crooked like fish hooks, grappling at himself. “I’ll hold you close, close, close. Just the two of us and I’ll burn everything away, crackling black glass, ashes, ashes, gone. All gone. All the things you love. It’ll just be the two of us. _Shh, shh, shh,”_ he whispered, rocking himself, rocking John in his head. “Everyone else will be dead and you’ll cry, oh how you’ll cry and then I’ll rip you open, sprawled for miles. Sprawled all over your precious dead. Precious little baby.”

John looked away from Grendel, looked at the hospital where Elsie and Hilton lay, asleep. Looked at the building, pink and white and green from all the broad leaf plants. A little hospital in a little resort town. The doors opened and he looked at the nurses, the doctors, the people all sitting and standing. Someone smoking on a bench. He just looked at them. Considered them. When he turned back Grendel was smiling, soft and gentle.

He had straightened up, leaning back into the corner so he could face John better. He had an open attractive sort of face that made one ignore his age. A pleasant smile that was almost apologetically good natured. Eyes bright and almost smiling. The man who clawed off his ears was gone, the man who got away with things in his place. He tilted his head at John, every part the gently chiding parent. “Don’t be so self-righteous Dr. Watson. After everything I lost… Well, I won’t say I don’t understand where you’re coming from, in a very sideways sort of way. But all I want is a little justice. A little fairness. So much was stolen from me, and all I tried to do was get it back, and every time you’ve been there, blocking the path.”

“Your plan didn’t work, the gun doesn’t work like you think it does.” John wasn’t entirely sure why he tried as he was completely sure it wouldn’t do any good. How unlikely John was to convince him of anything.

“Watson,” Grendel gently pinched at the bridge of his nose. “Watson. You’re not really a scientist now are you? You are a doctor, but not what I think anyone would call a terribly good one. I’m not sure how many years of medical school it takes to tell someone to keep hydrated and get plenty of rest. But well, no hard feelings. Don’t feel too down on yourself. You’re very useful I’m sure. Not nearly as useful as that little boy. Rather like you really, why I imagine that tall fellow shipped him off as soon as school started. I’m sure it was for the boy’s own good.” He considered John so gently.

John did not consider him back gently at all. He had closed and bolted the doors to himself. Had other things to worry about for now.

“It’s just that it’s only fair Watson,” Grendel’s smile was genial, gentle. His eyes bright, almost sadly humorous. “You can’t understand what it’s like to be brilliant. Really honestly brilliant. Not this cobbled together intelligence you’re carrying around. But to see everything, the reality of everything.” His eyes closed against the ecstatic memory of it. “To have everything be light, and clarity, such _beautiful_ perfection, I wish you could understand it. I hear people speak of their research, their findings, like it’s their child. But really children could never compare with that sort of knowledge. The kind only time, consideration, brilliance could dig up. Children can’t really compare. So messy and selfish. Truth is. They shut me down because I was better than them, understood things better than them and wasn’t so afraid of the general cattle wandering around to admit that I’m just superior. This place needs some serious clean up,” he laughed, easy and amiable. “Surely even a… person like you can admit if someone steals something from you it’s fair to demand it back. To be able to clean the world up.”

“I don’t think the world would enjoy that.”

“Well, she just needs a bit of reeducation. And maybe a lobotomy to stop her whining. I’ve been getting the worst headaches.” Grendel pressed down in the intercom that went up to the driver, filling the back seat with the soft sound of half muffled crying. “Why are we still sitting here? Drive! You’re very nearly the stupidest most useless creature I’ve even had the displeasure to be saddled with. But if you’re not going to make an effort I don’t see why I should even bother teaching you.”

The car made a panicked lurch and reversed to the sound of the driver trying to calm himself.

John took a deep breath and didn’t flinch.

 

**Don’t hate me too much Auntie, but Irene wants to be an opera singer in a past life. – GN**

**Can she even sing? – T**

**Apparently she does everything well and left it at that. I think she wants to test our resources. – GN**

**It’ll take me a bit of work. I’ll see what I can put together. – T**


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning for brief mentions of suicide attempt. Tentacle_love came through again as beta. And on a similar note, I've finally acquired a beta for Wee Doctor which has suffered in grammatical obscurity, so thank you to darling tristhe and I'll start putting up corrected chapters soon. My tumblr is thursdayplaid.tumblr.com, check it out for updates and information on the book plaidbaby and I are putting out in October.
> 
> Thousands of hugs!

Sherlock arrived in Italy vaguely irritated and slightly hungry. He could usually ignore hunger pains, but John had been in the habit of getting at least one meal a day in him; he’d gone a bit soft. He had become so used to it he had been surprised W hadn’t tried to feed him up as well. The two were so similar, so achingly identical. Sherlock had wanted to tell him, W, what he’d seen. How he’d observed. Anything he said, the smallest leap of logic and W’s bright expressive face tilted up, thoughtful and amazed. _Brilliant, excellent, amazing._ Bright shimmering words thrown to Sherlock as if they cost nothing, as if they meant something. No wonder John had such an indomitable determination to practice his art.

Sherlock had wanted to take W by the shoulders (gently) and tell him, _you look exactly the same._ The round features, the herd of sheep jumper, scrubbed clean hands, expressive rigid shoulders, and that incredibly maddeningly vulnerable curve of his occipital bone and then the counter curve of the back of his neck. It was slightly maddening that Sherlock couldn’t think of the anatomical name for that; John could have told him. John was good for that. It was the same undotted question mark that John had worn as a child.

John was a soldier. How could just walk around with his neck exposed like that? On occasion, while they walked the streets, Sherlock had had the urge to reach over and cover the back of John’s skull with his long hands just so no one would see. It wasn’t fair, that infuriating curve (there were so many ways to kill, so many ideas it could give and he had to stop himself from making a list, he’d likely not deal well with that) was so blatant, shouting John’s vulnerability. Precious missing John. And there it had been on W as well, that strange curve.

But then for all his sad eyed smiles, funny little gentilities, W was very, very dangerous. He’d grinned like a tiger, tiger burning bright (why hasn’t he deleted that poem?), or a lion sandy and gold, or something else terrible and wonderful and safe. He’d felt safe, well, safe for Sherlock. He’d like to see W fight, fistfight with much larger men and win. The shaping of W’s knuckles indicated a punch like an exploding mortar blast. This was John, what John would be when he grew out of being a child. Incredible strength for someone so small, intelligence. Presence that could fill a room but at the same time giving the faint impression he could somehow fit him into something. Perhaps a suitcase. Or into a pocket. The smallness, the neat precision of him felt odd. 

Maybe it was like observing a star that crunched before going supernova.

He was so like John. 

Sherlock shook off the distraction as the taxi pulled up to the beach villa where Elsie and Hilton had been involved in the shooting. Godfrey Norton, the outrageous creature, albeit one with a very well groomed mustache, had disappeared with Irene and his monstrous spotted dogs leaving Sherlock to solve this sudden case. The case W had given him.

He called ahead to the resort town hospital, but Mr. Cubbit was in surgery and would be for hours and Mrs. Cubbit –Elisie – was in a coma which meant neither of them were available for questioning. There was little point in dragging himself to hospital to sit around.

“Are you with the Cubbits?” the nurse asked. She shared more information than she should, but then the Italian authorities still believed it was a murder-suicide. The memory that hung in Sherlock’s mind of a brightly coloured young woman, shiny like the wondrous carapaces of beetles, scarabs, or the brighter street art perpetrated by young men like Raz, or the chemicals in his favourite lab at St. Bart’s. Smart, glittering, vibrant, and far too smart for such a mess. Sherlock didn’t doubt if she wanted to kill her husband she could do a much better job of it than some brutish travesty.

“No,” Sherlock answered after a moment of thought. The disconnect button called to him, but people let out the most vital information so casually. “I’m a detective.

“Oh,” she answered, and Sherlock applauded his patience in staying on the line. “With the New Scotland Yard.”

Now that was an interesting thing for her to say. “Did you guess because of my accent?”

“Yes,” she congratulated herself. “Also because of the Detective Lestrade that is here. I suppose you are here to meet him?”

Sherlock suddenly sat very straight in his seat. “Detective Lestrade is there, at hospital?”

“Yes, of course, he has not left yet.”

“Good, thank you,” Sherlock murmured absently and rung off. Nurses could be horrendous gossips, it wouldn’t do to alienate one when he had information yet to glean. 

What was Lestrade doing here? Did W think he couldn’t handle the case on his own? How did W get Lestrade here so quickly? He had to take a moment to center himself for a moment, take a deep breath and let it go. Eons had been wasted with him struggling on through false hypotheses and missing entirely the point of things when dealing with W. If he wanted to accomplish whatever he needed to accomplish he needed to just do it. He thought on the vulnerable revelation of the back of W’s neck as he rested his head, exhausted, on Sherlock’s shoulder. His so very careful breaths trembling in his throat as if W had been afraid he’d shatter or fall apart at the seams. The way he had just _trusted_. W was fond of him, found him useful, trusted him. Sherlock- Sherlock needed to return the favour enough to start moving forward instead of overthinking things; to be himself, take a few steps forward, not fearing to experiment.

He texted Lestrade, **What are you doing in Italy? - SH**

Time stretched impossibly (he knew the world didn’t revolve around him, he never said the world revolved around him, but did everyone have to be so slow?) before Lestrade answered. **How do you know where I am? – GL**

**Never mind, I don’t want to know. I can’t help you. – GL**

**You can. I’m almost to the Cubbit’s villa. I’d prefer to deal with you than the inspector for the Cubbit case. – SH**

**Did Dr. Watson send for you? - GL**

Inside his chest, against the fence line of his ribs Sherlock felt his heart try to dash itself, tried to beat its way out to the open. **John is with you? – SH**

**No his father. He was here earlier. Called away on family emergency. – GL**

W then. Elsie was a friend of Bad Davey’s, a friend of John’s. W must have come to pay respects, ensure the Cubbits were safe. If Sherlock understood the connotations of the way John had said Elsie was ‘Davey’s lady’ W was likely here to make sure Bad Davey didn’t show up and smother Mr. Cubbit to death in his sleep.

**Give me a second to get a cab. – GL**

The villa, when the cabbie pulled up, was the sort of controlled, plastered place designed to appeal to perceptions of Italy. The whole town looked specially designed for the visiting rich. The villa was pretty, very Italian, very well organized. But other than a particularly well varied garden the place had the appearance of something specifically designed to meet expectations. He took in the hardy grass, the twisting trees, the organization of it. It seemed to have good privacy, a lot of space and a high wall, but other than that it was something out of a magazine, or something designed to look like it fit in one. Lacking in independent spirit. But Sherlock supposed for the general population a sense of place in the landscaping was not their primary concern during their honeymoon. 

There were still police barriers up, but the actual police presence loitered around the scene in a way that was universal among police constables. A general trying to look busy attitude without actually doing anything of note. Sherlock took a deep breath, luckily he had long since acquired the gift of getting to the commanding officer at a crime scene in a very short period of time. By the time Lestrade had appeared, entirely grumpily from the back of a taxi cab, the Italian Inspector was reportedly on his way and the constables were looking more than a little browbeat. He abandoned them for a moment to rally Lestrade into enough of a useful strop to launch at the Italians.

When Lestrade arrived however he certainly didn’t look as Sherlock expected him to. The DI had more than his usual cups of coffee, a train journey, been handling a newspaper, had washed his hands more often than usual (like most men from Lestrade’s social sphere he didn’t seem to understand how much attention people could pay to hands, how chapped they were, the bits of ink caught around fingertips), hadn’t changed his clothes since yesterday (Lestrade avoided wrinkled clothes, even in his casual wear), was thinking on a rather large case already (that promising little dip between his eyebrows), hadn’t had as much sleep as he liked, and had worked himself up into a bit of a strop already.

“Detective Inspector Lestrade!” he greeted him.

“Don’t you start too, I’m not in a mood to be patronized. I’ve had enough of this whole mess. How did you get out here so fast? Last I saw you, you were trying to impress that Dr. Watson fellow.”

“I could ask you the same Lestrade.”

“It was my first day of holiday. I left before you finished that case with the poisoned lactose intolerant. I was only there because Gregson is in one of his moody phases again. Some French bird came to my table in the middle of a very nice dinner, told me justice was calling and dragged a great herd of Parisian policemen and myself over to Italy where I have remained in the same clothes and have no idea what to do except argue with Italians.” Lestrade looked very frustrated. It looked very similar to the expression he’d worn almost constantly through their early acquaintance.

“You have a little practice then,” Sherlock smiled encouragingly at him. Well, somewhat encouragingly. “You’ll be distracting the Italian authorities while I tell the inspector for this case all the ways in which he’s wrong.”

“Sherlock,” Lestrade sighed, and there went the face scrubbing. “Please don’t get yourself thrown into an Italian jail. I don’t want to call your mad brother to inform him you’re in an Italian jail.”

“Never fear Lestrade,” Sherlock smiled the smile John smiled when he was trying to be encouraging.

“You’re certain it’s not a murder-suicide?”

“I’ve met Elsie Cubbit before. I’m certain that if she had plans to murder her husband she’d be far smarter about it than simply shooting him. She’s an intelligent and enterprising young woman. I’m certain she’d make it look like an accident. Oh, here’s the _ispettore_ now.”

The inspector emerged from the back of a police car, head down and charging like a bull dog. Sherlock advantaged on him and flooded him with a barrage of questions. By the time they reached Lestrade the thin inspector was dazed staring on in a sort of wonder. “Now you will wait a moment,” the inspector said, holding up a finger. “That’s enough. It’s very clear what this was. A crime of passion. Very simple.”

“Inspector-?” Lestrade asked.

“Ispettore Martino.”

“Yes,” Lestrade agreed quickly. “This is an associate of mine, Sherlock Holmes. He’s very good at what he does. I’m sure that if you listen to what he has to say you won’t be disappointed.”

“Fine,” the inspector said. “But then no more Englishmen! You don’t come back, Signor Holmes doesn’t come back. No more Englishman at my crime scene!”

“That sounds entirely acceptable,” Sherlock smirked at him, much in the way, he imagined, a cat might smirk at its prey.

 

It boggled the mind that anyone thought this was anything but blackmail gone wrong; it was a work of a moment to tell from the blood stains on the carpeting. There was a bag leaning in the corner that had the distinct look of having money in it. How close the two blood stains were, practically on top of each other. A look at the crime scene photo showed why. The way Mr. Cubbit’s large frame (habitual carpenter, no, gardener) was slanted over Elsie’s. Her dark hair, the arm with the gun jammed under her so her aim had been compromised. It was obvious Mr. Cubbit had moved between her and whomever had shot him, fallen on top of her. She had either thought him dead or the prospect of being left at the mercy of the shooter had prompted her to try and kill herself. It was almost certain she planned to bribe or kill whoever had fired on her. Considering her good sense, likely kill and then get rid of the body somehow, hide the money and be done with it. She had accepted already her assailant was capable of murder, of killing who she loved, then why not protect her domestic happiness?

There was something romantic, tragic about them. Not the violence, elegance was lacking as a rule from crime scenes like this. Sherlock didn’t know a lot about love, the mysterious, mad nuances of it. But he could appreciate the beauty of it, how they turned toward each other, a shadow of something lovely bogged down and marked by the desperation in the crime. Stained glass was theoretically lovely whole or broken, but no purveyor of the arts would prefer it on the floor when it could be framed in a window. His cases seldom make him upset, sadden him. But whoever had put this in motion made Sherlock unsettled, upset. More than the usual desire to solve a puzzle, he actually wanted to see justice done.

His Italian had diminished a bit since school; it had long since been pushed to a back shelf of the language room of his mind palace, a little behind his dubiously accented German. “So your evaluation of the crime scene, brilliant as it is, is that Elsie Cubbit stood at the window, shot her husband in the back then walked over to him – and even though he’s approximately twice her size – tucked herself under his shoulder, and then tried to shoot herself. That makes enormous sense. And it would explain why she was downstairs with a bag full of money.”

“The money is strange,” the inspector agreed. “But then maybe she was running away with his money. He is some wealthy English gentleman, he has a title, money, she started to run away, he caught her. After she shot him she immediately regretted it and tried to kill herself.”

“The only problem with that, besides the fact that it’s idiotic and I’m fairly certain out of the couple Elsie Cubbit was the one with the money – a fact that can be discovered later I’m sure, is that the fact she came down with a loaded gun implies she was willing and able to do violence to anyone who stood in her way. So why the sudden regret for something she premeditated doing? In addition,” Sherlock brandished the photo at the inspector’s face. “She is clearly _not wearing shoes_ nor wearing makeup, and if the crime scene is as untouched as you promised, there are no shoes here. She might consider traveling without makeup, but traveling barefoot might make things difficult.”

“Ah,” the inspector thinly replied.

“Yes, ah. Now we shall go and look outside the windows,” he pointed to the wide, bright breakfast nook windows.

“Why would we look out there?” the inspector asked.

Great effort went into not commenting, but Sherlock trusted his look said enough.

It took even less time, once they were standing facing the outside of the windows to understand exactly what had occurred. In the thick rich dirt (compost and foreign soil) of the flower bed outside the window there were clear foot prints of someone who had a subtle limp, and one leg that was slightly longer than the other. It was unmistakable in the soft dirt. He threw out a hand to stop the inspector from trampling the evidence. “I assume your excellent crime scene investigators noticed these?”

“How do I know you did not make these?”

“Well,” he started. He heard a sort of John in his head, saying in a soft, high voice, _Sherlock._ Taking a moment to gird his loins he spoke slowly and precisely. “First, I’ve been watched ever since setting foot at the crime scene. Second, my feet are longer than the footprints here; third, my shoes are smooth soled, specialty made. Observe,” he showed the inspector the bottom of his shoes, scratched by the streets of London for traction, but without treads.

“And these shoes have very distinct soles!” the Inspector exclaimed.

It was a true labour to resist patronizing him. “See how the left foot sinks into the earth unevenly? The assailant has a limp caused by his left leg being slightly shorter than the other, caused by injury or birth defect. He has a specialty made shoe with more of a heel on one side. This has caused the smooth sinking lines where on the right foot the indention around the heel of the shoe is uneven because the shoe sunk past the smooth sole and the dirt, sticking especially to the leather, came away in clumps. He stepped here and here, and then waited by the edge of the window. He heard whatever was discussed and turned to fire a shot.” 

At this point the inspector was staring at rapt attention; it would almost be thrilling if the man didn’t look quite so vacant while doing it. “Here,” Sherlock pointed, “because of his uneven gait he tripped against the shrub and fired into the window seal.” There, clearly, in the seal was a splintered rivet and an embedded bullet. “I assume at this point she returned fire. The assailant fired a second shot, and Mr. Cubbit moved between her and the bullet, catching it in the back and falling on top of her. She then for a variety of reasons, decided the best action was to kill herself, but her arm pinned as it was, well.”

“How did you see all that?” the inspector asked in wonderment.

“I simply observed,” Sherlock said and took a breath to say something biting before looking at the thin inspector with his pristine uniform. Instead he asked, the gentle weight of W’s thoughtful understanding looming like a ghost behind him, “You don’t get very many major crimes here do you?”

“No,” Inspector Martino admitted. “Usually we only deal with break-ins on the off season and people who have had too much alcohol, or other things. I studied drug detection. I was the best at find drugs in my class. That is why I was sent here, but this was my first murder. But you were simply fantastic! That was amazing!”

Sherlock sighed the sigh of the greatly burdened, ignoring the pleasant feeling recognition brought, “Come then, I will show you how to properly interview suspects and then we’ll finish up this case. But first call in your forensic unit to take pictures, evidence, and moulds of these footprints.”

He stood for a moment, watching the back of the inspector, turned from angry and mulish to wondering. W had a habit of always setting things up so all the necessary tools were made available. And he then he thought, _Blackmail. Obvious_. “Ispettore Martino! Do you think you could find something hidden in this house?”

“Um,” Inspector Martino paused. “It’s a big house. But probably.”

“Excellent, I’ll put you to work as soon as we’re done with the witnesses.”

 

**Hey Roost, stay with Tim right now okay? No adventures. – BD**

**No adventures. I know. Tim brought a puzzle so I won’t get bored. There aren’t that many pieces, and I can see how it fits together. – RW**

**If you get bored start hiding the pieces around 221B. – BD**

**But that’s mean. It would drive me mad if it was my flat. – RW**

**:) – BD**


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late, I would like to point out that it hasn't been betaed. If you see any overwhelming problems feel free to comment. TRIGGER WARNINGS: for stalking and short mentions of abusive dialogue, and mention in the second and third to last paragraphs of suicide. I put it at the end, so if mentions of suicide bothers you, you can read the chapter uninterrupted. There is a bit of information attached to it, so if you want to avoid the end of the chapter just send me a message on tumblr and I'll respond.
> 
> My tumblr is thursdayplaid.tumblr.com

Sherlock recognized the little dancing figures as soon as Inspector Martino found an envelope full of them. He’d seen enough of them scrawled across papers on Bad Davey’s desk. While it was obvious the man hadn’t fired the shots himself, Sherlock had little doubt the man himself was involved. He left the two inspectors with clear instructions to search for limping individuals, most likely a man by the size of the foot, though they shouldn’t completely disregard women with large feet, and had a constable drive him to hospital.

Bad Davey was curled up beside the bed, the side rails lowered on one side, the smooth shine of his hair ruffled up where it pressed against Hilton Cubbit’s hip. Their fingers rested against each other on the hospital sheet, a delicate gesture of comfort while Hilton is surrounded by beeping and machine. At Sherlock’s first step inside the room, Davey jerked awake, turning to face him. Dark smudges sat beneath Davey’s eyes. A pink line delineated his cheek from sleeping on a crease in the sheet. He straightened up quickly into something sharp and dangerous, except for that pink line. Proof he couldn’t avoid. He stood defensively, blocking the view of Cubbit as much as he could, a sleek curved line of a knife in his hand, oiled dark so not to flash in the light.

It was in fact an action the very opposite of homicidal. At least not homicidal toward Hilton.

Bad Davey and Sherlock fostered a sort of mild contempt for each other. Even with the recent epiphanies of Bad Davey’s relationship to W, Sherlock couldn’t help the curl of his lip when he saw the careful consideration of Davey’s shoe with his soft overlay on the sole of London soil. Or the sleek, sharp way he dressed preening and daring anyone to comment. But very suddenly Sherlock realized his assumptions, his _proof_ was incorrect. Bad Davey made an annoyed sound and straightened up, hiding away his knife inside his jacket. The line of it wasn’t disturbed at all, but then a man like Davey would have a suit jacket designed so he could hide anything inside. Spare bullets, extra phones, and who knows what else. “Of course he’d bring you in to this case.”

“What are-” Sherlock fished for a way to ask to ask _what are you doing?_ without sounding quite so inelegant. He hadn’t felt this wrong footed in ages.

Lifting his chin like a man before his execution, Bad Davey answered simply, “Hilton is my friend.”

“I wouldn’t think you’d have friends.”

There was a pause, a slight tilt of the head, a thoughtful moment. “I’ve learned that there are so few people who are truly innocent, just… unhindered, that if I discover one I’d have to keep them close.”

“No one’s really innocent.”

Bad Davey looked at him, raised an eyebrow in a way that was both vaguely familiar and instinctively annoying. “Don’t listen to the propaganda, caring about something is the only thing that’ll keep you from being eaten up.” He looked at Hilton, placed so precisely on his bed, the padding obvious beneath the large hospital gown. “I have been reminded of the fact and instructed not to get overly involved. To remain the sort of person that Hilton would still admire. He’s the most ridiculous puppyish thing, but he deserves that much in the very least.”

“You’ve gone sentimental.”

“Don’t worry,” Davey grinned. “My head’s still full of horrors for the horrible. And I’ll still crack your ankle if you sass me. Watson would love that, keep you out of trouble for twelve seconds put together.”

Sherlock paused, and considered him. It was like looking at a mirror tilted to slightly the wrong angle so there was nothing to see but far corners. He couldn’t read any reactions in Davey, read any actions, except being still slightly groggy from just waking up, for all it didn’t affect his mental acuity, and affectionate toward Hilton. Taking half a step forward, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the envelope Elsie had hidden in the bedroom. “This was found at the crime scene. I recognized the code as one you use.”

Taking the envelope, he opening it quickly, pulling out the cards and flipping through them quickly. His face transformed like the rising of some great and terrible sun. His eyes turning dark, the angles of his features turning sharp enough to ravage, slice great bleeding ravines into anything that stood in his way. “Elsie had these?”

“Yes, do you know who could have sent these, I would have thought you, but the figures become increasingly poorly drawn. And the writer became angry enough to press through the paper in some places.”

“You did think it was me,” Davey said furiously, his whole body had turned furious. “This one was on the back of a note card _Hilton_ wrote. How dare- How dare-” Davey began to take great billowing breaths in through his nose and Sherlock began to become concerned.

Crowds of little dancing men clutched in his fist he slammed his way in to the small hospital bathroom and a terrible clatter took up of breaking glass and smashing things. A silence fell afterward just as terrible as the clamour. Sherlock, stood, forced to wait, thoroughly out of his depth in the waves of sentiment roiling around the room. After a short while Davey strolled out, carefully shut the door, expression as calm as a summer’s day, his hands bleeding from a series of small cuts. When a panicked nurse stuck his head in, Davey said serenely, “I seemed to have slipped in the bathroom and could probably using a little mending.”

Sherlock considered the sudden changes with a bit of horror, but Davey simply smiled back, low and dangerous. He spoke almost jauntily, but perhaps more like a cat playing with its food. “This was a two person job, the first supplied the code, the second was nearly hopeless at it. I doubt it was a member of my organization. Whoever it was would have to get hold of something terribly official, in regular messages sent back and forth, no vowels other than ‘I’ used only for the pronoun. Makes it harder to crack. There are other more complicated codings. But this one uses the code like it would be used as an alphabet.”

Going quiet as a harried doctor came in, Davey handed over the bundle of papers to keep his blood off them allowing the doctor to chide him a little. Sherlock wondered if it wasn’t for the sake of nostalgia. “They’ve been through a very difficult time,” Davey spoke carefully to Sherlock. Washing his hands in the small hospital bathroom, the lights turning him into something cool and soft edged. Standing calming in the midst of scattered glass and metal. “You will leave them out of the worst of it. I’m going to have the transferred back to England as soon as I can get everything organized and I can be sure they’ll be safe. Hilton’s little punk assistant will be here soon as I’ll be here to kick his teeth down his throat if he’s disrespectful.”

It was so strange to watch Davey submitting peacefully to the doctor wrapping him in gauze and putting a few stitches into a deep gash in the pad at the base of his thumb. Like walking in on Mycroft crying. “I’ll be sure that the importance of their privacy is understood,” Sherlock said simply.

Once the doctor threatened Davey with costs he finally left and Davey began again. “The first card on top reads, ‘You – you know you belong to me.’”

“You’ve left out a word,” Sherlock said, and then immediately extrapolated why, Davey gave him a look to express the stupidity that statement revealed.

“Yes, well. The next is frankly disgusting.” He flipped to the next card and held it up. “’I’ve arrived.’ The one after that, ‘Stop ignoring me.’ Dull. Finally, ‘Elsie, if I can’t have you no one will.’ Which in addition to making him deserving of a slow and thoughtful death is also horrifically cliché.”

“You have an idea who it is?”

“A fairly good idea. How and why he both arrived here and got my code are the big questions to ask, but little problems first.” He trembling subtly with fury despite his deceptive calm.

“Hmm,” Sherlock replied.

“There is a man who I thought I had killed,” Davey let out a short breath at that. “Whom I tried very hard to kill. I failed, and I would correct,” he made a short precise tic, “my failure but I believe it would be counterproductive. His name was Abraham Slaney. For reasons I cannot fathom he went by Abe. He will have had extensive reconstructive surgery on both his face and body, so I can’t tell you for certain what he looks like, you get to figure that out for yourself.”

“Extensive surgery?”

“I was rather cross with him,” Davey said simply. Flatly. “He did not behave appropriately toward Elsie.”

That choice of phrase, the thought behind it brought to front the slash of a smile, the flashing knife that Davey used about his work. Looking at Davey’s placid face, Sherlock felt a bit unsure. He’d seen the evidence of violence Davey calmly executed the guarded way he’d pulled John close to kiss and hold and push away. A man of violent, gentle love. Sentiment sat strange with Sherlock.

“Anything else you can tell me?”

“Slaney isn’t clever enough for this alone. Someone found him and fixed him up. Someone gave him my code. Someone is trying to distract me away from my assigned duties.”

“You think this may be a business rival?”

“One who may soon find themself liquidated, but clever nonetheless, Slaney was just bait in the trap. I don’t know why Elsie didn’t tell me. She had to have known this wasn’t from me. My threats are much better thought out than this, and I’d never use this sort of language in reference to her.”

Sherlock paused, thought, “Sentiment is not my strong point, but from what I know of your brother, she may have been trying to protect you.”

“Me? From what?”

“Lots of things, losing your temper and blowing up London. In my experience with John, very often the individuals one considers under one’s protection have a great sense of responsibility in return.”

Davey laughed, “John’s almost made you human Sherlock. I’m almost proud.”

He made a face in return, almost offended, but then he supposed Davey didn’t deal well with sentiment either. He paused a moment on his way out the door. “Lestrade said that W, Watson was here.”

“Yes,” Davey agreed, attention already going back to Hilton. 

“Did he say anything to you? Give anything or leave anything for you?”

Barely sparing more than a glance, Davey answered, “No, nothing. Feel free to check the nurses’ station though. I’m not saying he didn’t leave anything behind, but I’m pretty sure if he did I would know about it.” When that was insufficient to budge Sherlock, Davey made a face at him, “I still have that knife you know.”

While he would have been certain before entering the hospital room that Davey would have hidden something from him just to spite him, he was more convinced now that as violent or vindictive as Davey’s tendencies might be, he was capable of subjugating them for the good of his family. And Sherlock could think of no reason hiding something from him would benefit any of the Watson’s interests.

“Watson thinks you’re brilliant and wants you alive and happy. Get out here, Hilton will wake up soon and I don’t want him overwhelmed when Mr. Downs gets here with the rest of the Cubbits in tow no doubt.”

“Mr. Downs?”

“The poor excuse of a personal assistant.”

Sherlock nodded and made his escape, feeling a through upheaval due to the revelations the little meeting brought. He wouldn’t have suspected that Davey, feeling as he did would allow injury to the Cubbits go without any vengeance, that he would be able to recognize the trap. But then Sherlock didn’t much understand feelings.

He could see the problems that could arise in the coming conversation, and he had wasted enough time chasing after a false lead. Finding an opening, he bellied up to the desk and waited to catch a nurse’s eye. “A Dr. Watson, not a doctor who works here, was called to the nurses’ station for an emergency, sometime early this morning. Did he leave anything?”

“The shift just recently changed,” the nurse said unhelpfully. “But I can check. Is it medical?”

“No, he’s visiting a family friend, not consulting.” Sherlock tapped his fingers against the desk, trying not to be impatient. “A note, a parcel, anything at all?”

“Hmm,” the nurse said, moving at microscopic speeds. “No, nothing.”

“Are you certain?”

She gave him a look that could probably strip paint. “This is very much a resort town hospital signor, but it is still a hospital, not a post office. We very rarely hold anything for anyone, but when we do we keep it in one place and label it. There is nothing that has Dr. Watson’s name on it, we would have put his name on it, since he was the man who answered the call.”

Sherlock blinked, “You’re much smarter than I assumed then, but I had to make allowances for a potential lack of understanding, it’s key in an attempted murder.”

“Oh!” she brightened. “The one with the handsome ispettore. Is he around here? He said he’d talk to me about forensic requirements for Scotland Yard. Do remind him if you see him?”

“He’s finishing solving the case I should hope.” He paused just a moment before leaving. “You have been of some use, I’ll remind him if it’s convenient. You’d certainly be of more use than the idiots they’re employing now,” he told her by way of thanks, already considering the notes the assailant had slipped Elsie Cubbit. Davey hadn’t made his way through all of them, it was possible there were clues on another of them, he could search through them on his way to the crime scene. Hopefully Lestrade and Martino had enough time to do at least a cursory search.

He pointedly ignored the chattering of the constable driving him in favour of texting Lestrade until the DI confirmed they’d found something of interest and they’d meet him at the crime scene.

“I did the interview,” Martino said proudly. There was a man of the description we’re looking for staying at a hotel run by an American couple called the Elridges. The man arrived the day after the Cubbits and leaves early in the morning and then leaves late at night. He first cancelled the rest of his stay the afternoon before the shooting and then reserved his room again the morning after. We’re almost certain he’s our suspect. And if nothing else we can bring him for credit card fraud.”

“Abe Slaney?” Sherlock asked.

“How did you know?”

“Elsie Cubbit was once in a relationship with an Abe Slaney, he was controlling and had some very dangerous tendencies. It’s certain that he discovered her engagement and then, becoming jealous, began contacting her with a code they both knew,” it seemed wise to leave out the part about the code belonging to a London based criminal mastermind. “She finally tried bribery to make him leave. He wasn’t interested, Hilton Cubbit accidentally interfered. Now it’s only a matter of figuring out where he may be hiding now.” 

“Why would the suspect have his credit card though?” Martino asked and Sherlock froze. For all that Sherlock was able to decipher this crime in the time it took to observe, he had been taken aback by a few things.

“What do you mean?”

“The suspect’s name is Downs,” Lestrade said, starting to look as antsy as Sherlock was feeling. 

“I know where the suspect is, we need to get back to hospital immediately. Whose still there?”

“Dubugue,” Lestrade said quickly, pulling out his phone. “She can take care of it until we get there.”

Martino snagged the constable, the slightly bubbling man had disappeared to leave an ispecttore shouting orders. “Back to the hospital! Quickly!”

This made such strange sense. Why did Slaney wait so long to strike? Why would someone as intelligent and well-trained as Elsie try to kill herself? The edges of this melted into sentiment and shadow, confusing the issue. Had the second person Davey said stole the code and taught it to Slaney wanted him to wait and strike at a specific time? And why? What was this supposed to serve as a distraction for, what was it meant to cover up? Davey said he had been told not to take this bait, that it would change him. So someone was trying to draw Davey away from something. To keep him from doing something? Stopping something? Helping something? Sherlock made a frustrated sound.

And then Elsie, pinned. If it was contrary to expectations that she would attempt suicide, than what was her motive? Slaney had no real interest in Hilton, only Elsie. But Slaney would have to move Hilton out of the way to get to Elsie, and it was unlikely he’d take the care to be gentle. Had she taken a gamble on her own aim? That in the face of Slaney’s established violent temperament, she could take a chance on her husband’s potentially life threatening wound and kill Slaney or trust her own skill and hope? Would she risk that much to fake her suicide for someone she loved? People in love did those sorts of things in books, but then they also talked to rabbits and fairies, so it was a point he couldn’t prove. But it seemed the sort of mix of intelligence and sentiment that W would approve of in a person.

By the time Sherlock raced back Dubugue and the French constables were poised, ready to spring while at the door to Hilton’s room, the rest of the patient rooms locked down and the medical staff had retreated in the wake of Davey and a man who could only be Slaney in a tangle of scrabbling limbs going for each other’s throats.

 

**W - Roost has eaten all the jammie dodgers. Send us a message. – Tim**


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all, we are just very almost at the end of Bantam Wars and of the series. It's been so much fun. There will be some changes to the tags and such, please be aware, I don't want to spoil anything, so I will put warnings up for next week. Tentacle_love came through again in saving the day and being wonderful. I would like to take a moment to thank my betas again. When I first started this series I shed blood sweat and tears to try and get someone to beta for me, but no one was willing. I appreciate Caroline and tentacle_love to take the time out of their tremendously busy schedules to beta for me and show interest in the writing process. I won't turn this into an award speech, but they are wonderful and I wanted everyone to know. There's some violence in this chapter, quite a bit, and some hints some of the tumblr folks may recognise.
> 
> Said tumblr is at thursdayplaid.tumblr.com. I'm a bit behind on updating livejournal and fanfiction, so if you know anyone from either of those arena, please don't give spoilers.

“Everyone back up!” Lestrade roared in a tone that bridged language barriers. The French, except the woman identified as Dubugue, who appeared as though death and hell would be of small consequence to her, scurried back. She stood to her full height, braced for an opening. Davey finally got the upper hand and crunched Slaney’s jaw against the hospital floor. It became obvious that Davey had got ahold of Slaney and now it was too dangerous to get near in order to pry Slaney loose. 

“Davey,” Sherlock said slowly. “You promised your father.”

“What do I care what he thinks, he’s going to kill-” Davey went silent, swallowed for a moment, catching himself. His furious face was hypnotic. Sherlock couldn’t help but stare at Davey, eyes moving faster than lightning, at a vertigo inducing pace. “He’s going to kill Hilton if I let him go.”

“In your situation I believe I would also desire to kill the individual who had put my best friends at risk, but I believe I would find a way to do so that wouldn’t involve my crime in front of a crowd of police officers. You’re better than that at least.” Sherlock found himself strangely motivated to try and keep Davey from disappointing W.

“Slaney was about to smoother Hilton with a pillow,” Davey protested again, but with more good sense mixed in now.

“What do you care?” Slaney snarled. “You’re a businessman, you know the value of things. They’re not worth much. She’s mine, she’ll always be mine. To you she’s just-” 

As Slaney spoke, Davey’s face went utterly, burningly still. For a single terrifying moment Sherlock was entirely certain Davey was going break Slaney’s neck. He took a fistful of Slaney’s hair, interrupting him.

“You are much mistaken sir. You are a weak, putrescence of a coward. You are nothing, and everybody knows. They will always know. Let that stick in your craw and bleed you out.” 

Then with one hand Davey struck the man’s face into the floor, flattening his nose into something crushed and shattered. He rose, imperious as a king, eyes half-lidded and entirely too knowing. “Don’t look so surprised,” he chided Sherlock, reminiscent of John, of W. “I’d no more dirty my hands with his blood than I would bother crushing a worm beneath my heel. And a worm is worth much more than him.”

Sherlock stared at him, watched Davey check his watch and sigh. “Are you… Alright?”

“I’m on a time frame. I want the Cubbits back home tonight. I can’t bear another distraction. And I have some other business to take care of before tonight.”

Slaney gave out a shout and tried to rush Dubugue, assuming her the weakest point in the police line. Dubugue seized Slaney around the arms with a cry of _justice!_ and performing some sort of advanced maneuver where she bent back at the waist and slammed him into the ground. “You are now in the hands of the law sir! Will someone with jurisdiction inform this man his rights?”

Davey slid past the English, Italian, and French officers trying to decide who had rights to Slaney and stepped into Hilton’s room with Sherlock following, closing the door to the Hilton’s room behind him. This whole case smelled like a distraction, not only for Davey, but also for himself. It was a strange combination of too easy and too much work, running around, wasting almost two days. Confusion, rushing, too many little pieces scrambling together. But it was finished now and he wanted a few answers. “Now the case is finished in a satisfactory manner, except all the time I’ve wasted in travel, do you know where your father might be?”

“David?” came a small voice from the bed and Davey’s attention left Sherlock. Hilton had apparently come groggily awake from the sound of the brawl outside, a deep crease between his eyebrows. He tried to move, twitching between startled and static from the pain.

Davey stood next to Hilton, kindly ignoring the twist of Hilton’s features, the lack of dignity in his confusion; the flinch right before tears. “Careful,” Davey said gently, resting one hand tenderly over him. Like a parent comforting his child. 

“I-”

“Careful,” Davey said again, his tone so no-nonsense there was nothing to say in response. “What do you remember?”

“Elsie,” Hilton said again, his face almost crumpling.

“Elsie is okay, she’s fine. Just a few rooms away. She’s really okay. There was an accident, a gun went off, but she’s okay. She’s been in surgery for some cosmetic things, but no brain damage, nothing to worry about. She’s sleeping off the anesthesia.”

“You promise? David. You-?”

Davey leaned close and Sherlock looked away, letting the speed train of his thoughts drown out the sound of his murmurs.

“Okay,” Hilton said softly. “Did you come, did you come all the way from London?”

“Friends, aren’t we? My dad does a lot of business all over, when he heard about you two he arranged for me to be able to come right away.”

“Who’s-?” He groggily looked toward Sherlock.

“This is Mr. Holmes. He’s my dad’s good friend. He does detective work; he came to solve this thing and get it all finished up. The local police are only borderline competent, they had all sorts of strange theories, but Mr. Holmes has sorted them out. Closed the case.”

“What?” Hilton asked, voice small beneath the weight of his discomfort, his grip on Davey hand was tight, but Davey made no sign of whether or not it hurt to have his injured hand squeezed so hard.

Sherlock stepped forward at this. “Mrs. Cubbit had been involved in a dangerous relationship in the past. She fled it when she came to London. The man found her and had began stalking her. She tried to bribe him to leave her alone, but when it became clear that she wouldn’t leave you he became very angry.”

“Is she? She’s okay?”

“We’ll have to see,” Davey answered. “Right now we need to get more medication into you.”

“I,” he looked between Sherlock and Davey. “I want to ask you something.”

“I can leave,” Sherlock said, stepping back toward the door. “I simply wanted to inform you the man is in custody and will remain so, far into the future. He’s no longer a concern.”

Despite his obvious pain, Hilton smiled thinly. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“Holmes,” Davey said, letting his attention be diverted for a moment. “Thank you. Unless Hilton’s parents have another tantrum, I’ll be taking the Cubbits to see a specialist in London. If my dad’s not hanging around here he’s probably there.”

“Why?”

“He makes his own plans,” Davey shrugged. “I hardly know what he’s about half the time. The only way to get it out of him is to get him drunk and guilty.”

“I’ll keep that in mind the next time I see him,” Sherlock said tight and annoyed, but Davey’s attention had already refocused on Hilton. He felt sick and tired of traveling. The police decided, for safety’s sake, to read Slaney rights for all three countries, but to hold him in Italy until he could be returned to London. Busywork and distractions all. Sherlock wasn’t going to finish this game; he was going to head home and wait for W there.

 

In a small house at the edge of London Dr. John Watson was trying very hard not to go into shock. He hysterically remembered one of his clinic patients describe the drop right before an IBS attack, the way they described the loss of serotonin like a great gaping hole opening inside them. The precipice of utter dread. He took a breath and released it again. He wasn’t actually injured. Grendel didn’t want to hurt him. Not physically. Not yet. Grendel’s strained faced sucked in shallow breaths, his face pale from pain, trembling. John pretended valiantly that he wasn’t breathing in time, the same short horrified puffs of air. That he wasn’t soaked through with beading sweat. The crux of it was, as ignorant Grendel was of everything else he seemed to understand without any effort how John’s brain had started to work. The way walking through a crowd was an ever increasing pandemonium of feelings, aches and pains, felicities, and spare shifting thoughts blared at him without mercy. 

How John was forced to see, to hear too quickly for him to build up coping mechanisms. 

Grendel seemed to understand that, relish in it, but also seemed luckily, thankfully, ignorant to John’s utter resolve. How much he loved them. His darling geniuses. Brilliant lonely creatures. If Grendel had ever loved anything, John suspected the madman had slit its throat long ago. This whole agony had been a proof of that.

Once they drove away from the hospital Grendel arranged for them to board a boat and cross the Channel back to England. “I’m certain you’ve transported my device somewhere you can keep an eye on it. Watch it. Be with it,” Grendel said, rationality flickering behind his eyes. He licked his lips. “It’s just so hungry. It needs to eat.”

When John’s eyes shifted toward the door Grendel had pulled out a knife from somewhere on his person, driving it through the hand of his assistant. Grinning at the way John flinched in sympathetic pain.

“You can feel that can’t you?” Grendel grinned, teeth pink from gnawing at himself. “You can feel his pain. I know your secret. You can feel them, clawing at your head with all their little _feelings_. You can feel his pain. How strong is the sensation? How far is your sympathy stretched? How long until you’re madder than I am?”

“I don’t think it’s possible to be.”

Grendel snarled and roared, his insanity _scraaaatching_ between the layers of John’s skin. “You made me this way. You stopped it from eating. It needs their names to live. It needs their lives and it hurts. It _hurts_.”

“Let me patch him up, I won’t make a run for it,” John said quickly before Grendel could stab again.

“He’ll patch up himself.”

When John looked at the assistant, gripping his hand tight, he’d given John a coldly determined look, “Dr. Grendel’s going to send me home. He was about to send me home before you ruined everything. He can’t help being the way he is. The risks he’s taking to help me.”

It was clear the assistant believed that beneath the strain. No point in arguing. There was a fanatical certainly to him. 

Once they arrived at shore Grendel had drugged him with something that knocked John out that was possibly slightly psychotropic. He woke up with all three of them in a little sealed up house in London, in a little sealed up room. John’s watch was taken, and the assistant had been struck hard when he reported that John had no phone on him. After that Grendel had trapped the three of them in a small room with no windows and no clock, not letting any of them sleep or eat, tying down John’s wrists, asking John question after question, where was Roost, where was Davey, who had the gun, who was the man with the phone, how were the Holmes involved? All the while torturing the assistant in a bit of power play. The interrogation ended with Grendel cutting off the assistant’s little finger in front of John who almost vomited, almost gagging in time with the assistant who made no other complaint. Of course not, Grendel was going to send him home.

“For someone who purports to care so much about people, I’m shocked you’ve refused to answer any of my reasonable questions.”

John didn’t see much point in mentioning that the assistant wasn’t restrained, that he’d been sitting through it all like it was some sort of ritualized mortification of the flesh, the only pause in staring John down his occasional smoke breaks. 

John had lost track of time as he had been meant to, but he trusted his internal clock enough he could approximate he was on schedule.

“Let me at least bind that up before he bleeds out,” John finally said. Infection was the real danger in this dusty, gritty space, but Grendel seemed oblivious to filth, more likely to respond to the idea of blood loss. He was starting to feel a bit mad, delirious, and he was sure it showed. But he was still a good enough doctor to know what to say to get something done. “I might be able to reattach it.”

“And give my assistant gangrene?” Grendel snorted. “You can seal the wound. I’ll go have something to eat, then we’ll see what’s to be done next.” He couldn’t have been any more obvious than if he and his assistant had winked at each other. The assistant would try and play the sympathy card and break John that way.

When Grendel released John’s restraints John slid forward and almost fell, his sweaty palms sliding. Grendel bought the act even completely than John hoped, accepting the weakness without argument. The whole display had taken more out of John than even he had assumed. He took the first aid kit without argument and sitting slowly, like an aching old man, fell into the familiar patterns of cleaning, sewing, bandaging.

“Do you really feel it?”

“What?” John answered absently.

“Feel the pain?” the assistant clarified, sounding a bit like someone in a panto. John realised he didn’t even know the assistant’s name, and realised he didn’t really care.

“No,” John answered. “It’s not like that. I observe emotional responses.”

“Have you always been that way?”

“No. Not as much at least. Grendel’s device simply magnified it. I figured it out, quite some time ago,” John said gently. “My perception was beginning to open at an exponential rate, where before the growth was controlled. Limited.” He finished the stitches, turned so the assistant couldn’t see his face. After all this, John wasn’t willing to take the risk of letting him see his face, even though these were honest fears. Secrets – fears and worries he’d hidden in his heart. “It’s only getting stronger. I’m afraid it’ll put me over the edge soon. I’m not as eager to work against Dr. Grendel as he believes. I need him to figure out how to fix the gun. It’s the most important thing in the world to me. The gun has been completely melted down, but Grendel could build another.”

When he turned around the assistant’s eyes were alight with fanaticism beneath the pain. “I should go change,” he said quickly. Walking carefully to the door, he spared only one last look to John before he disappeared, locking it behind him.

John was as insulted as he was relieved they expected an associate of Sherlock Holmes would be held by a single locked door. He waited a while, gathered himself, breathed in deeply. He’d need to be prepared. It was almost exactly what he had feared finding. Even after Dr. Tobel had broken it apart John had still sensed something, growling, roaring, knocking at the gate to come in and stuff its face. What John knew about physics he’d learned from panel shows and documentaries, all light stuff. But he was a doctor, he knew about parasites. About viruses that wormed their way inside the body and used the body’s own cells to reproduce. To feed itself. The question was of course what happened after the cell burst.

He observed Grendel with his lesions, his madness, and his nearly feverish obsession; how he spoke of its hunger and licked his own lips. Even broken down there was something still keeping the device alive. The problem was of course that Grendel didn’t seem to attract madness alone, he had somehow arranged for others with interest in John to join in his little game. Better John than Sherlock at least. John stood, fiddled with his collar, and pulled out a couple of strong wires which he used to great effect to pick the lock. 

He wasn’t sure what he had expected to happen when he’d opened the door. But there was no sound but a soft distant knocking, nothing and no one in the hall but dust lit by the sharp hall lights hadn’t been it. The walls had been painted a grey white and covered in scribbling that made John’s skin crawl. The only other doors had been boarded over and nailed shut. He hadn’t any tools to pry them open and it would make too much noise anyway. He crept slowly along the wall toward the knocking. A soft _tap, tap, tap; tap, tap, tap; tap, tap, tap_.

As he got close a stench arose, varied and textured; the smells were so vibrant to have presence, the stink of vomit jaggedly zig-zagging around doorways, the stench of sickness sweated out moping in corners. He stopped as he came to a blind corner, crouched low, and listened. There was the soft tap, and a softer murmur repeated. When he peeked around it he saw first the curled body of the assistant, with a red and white savagery of a throat that he couldn’t look at for very long, laying at the feet of Dr. Grendel. The floor was covered in something that looked wet and organic which crawled and soaked up the baseboards. Dr. Grendel himself stood with his back mostly to John, weaving in place, floating on some warm current no one else could feel. Grendel raised his hand in a loose fist and knocked once, twice, thrice against the wall. _Let me in,_ Dr. Grendel whispered. _Let me in, let me in._

John beat a hasty retreat in the opposite direction, the doors on this side of the house had been more barricaded than boarded up. He had seriously underestimated the size of the house and the stuffiness of it. It seemed like nothing more than some musty horror movie set put together to aggravate him. Slow him down. The piles of things, old shoes, gas masks, metal racks, broken pieces of furniture, ripped apart books, had him almost pressing against the wall covered in equations, symbols, angry crosshatches of lines. When he reached the front door the relief almost made him faint, he was about to open it and leg it into the distance, but he couldn’t see outside and he’d noticed (God bless Sherlock and his preoccupation with teaching a miniature John observation) an alarm system. As far gone as Grendel had been, he couldn’t assume that he wouldn’t set the alarm, or that a previously saner Grendel hadn’t thought to set the alarm to go off when the door opened. John had been busy being unconscious when Grendel had brought him in, so that was no help. He bounced in place, foot to foot considering.

He stopped when he realized he’d been scratching at his wrist again. 

Second hand madness wasn’t an option right now.

And didn’t he want Grendel to chase him? Breathing deep, he threw open the door, springing out as an alarm started beeping behind him. London with all her smells, rich, smoggy, populated London sang to him through the window, bolstered him. Made him ready for what was to come. 

It would be alright, he assured himself as he ran for a road where he could catch a taxi. It would be for the best. He felt terrified, a bit, around the edges, but he’d always performed well under pressure.

Miraculously, even panting wildly, disheveled, and slightly bloody a cab stopped for him. “St Bart’s hospital please,” he panted, tense. “As quick as you can.” Luckily he still had his wallet on him, or he’d have to attempt to flee from an angry cabbie while doing everything else. Anxiety roiled in his stomach across the bedrock of his determination. It was a feeling he’d had before, one he’d overcome. Hardly paying attention, he entered Bart’s, asking after the Cubbits, finding their room. It all felt like he was in a daze, like a sleeping limb trying to wake up.

Davey argued out in the hall by the nurses’ station with Hilton’s parents, words cracking and crawling over all defenses, voice rising and falling in cadence like the breakers before a tempest. Their attention was elsewhere. John slipped into Elsie’s room, heading straight for Davey’s jacket, still hung over the chair by her bedside. He could see from the twist of the chair how Davey had stood, tall and imperious, the way the breadth of his shoulders became almost heroic despite what he liked to pretend. He tried the pockets carefully and found his phone, an old simple watch. Davey had been looking through John’s texts from Roost. They were mostly science facts. The latest one made something pang inside John’s chest: **You didn’t call to say goodnight. I have a new puzzle. I’m not bored. It has lots pieces to put together. – RW**

**Hummingbirds are territorial and many have symbiotic relationships with birds of prey. – RW**

He had to get out of there before Grendel discovered where he was. If John had to break someone’s neck in a crowded hospital it was going to cause a lot of trouble. He opened up a new message as he hurried. **Mycroft, circumstances have become unique. Please meet me outside St. Bart’s within the next half hour. It is vital. – W**

 

**BD – I finished the puzzle! I didn’t like it, find me a happier puzzle next time. When will you be back? – RW**

**The medflight just arrived. We’ll be in St. Bart’s shortly. I’ll come and see you and the souse in a little bit. – BD**

**BD – Watson said not to call him that because he cares about him and doesn’t want him to be sad. – RW**

**Tim’s a big boy. And he needs a reminder that people care what he does. – BD**

**Stay out of trouble. – BD**

** - RW**


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been a magnificent journey, to be a bit cliche, and I'd like to thank everyone who supported the series, to sound a bit like an acceptance speech. I've really enjoyed this and hope that the last chapter is satisfactory. It is the ending that I feel is right for the series. Before we go any farther there is a TRIGGER WARNING: there is suicide by major characters, mental anguish, and discussion with a mentally unstable individual. If any of these things will trigger you, don't read the chapter, I have prepared. There is a much shorter, edited chapter right after this one. There is some unavoidable mention, but I've tried to make it as oblique and sideways as possible so to limit the effect.
> 
> Once again, my tumblr is thursdayplaid.tumblr.com. Feel free to drop by. Please refrain from revealing the ending to anyone for a day or two, just so everyone has a chance to reach the end on their own terms.
> 
> Thank you for being part of the fun!

Grendel burst onto the roof, ragged-breathed, eyes roving wildly. But John stood alone on the roof. Just John.

“You ran home then?” Grendel snarled at him. “Like a fox up a tree.”

John didn’t comment on that. “I needed to get out. I needed to get out.”

“And fix yourself? Undo the damage? Try to use my gun? _My_ gun.”

The view from the roof of St Bart’s was beautiful. John looked over it; the rooftops, the grey-blue London sky. He didn’t say anything. What could he be expected to say?

“If I can’t figure it out, you can’t figure it out. _You_ can’t figure it out. You’re going to go mad, your brain’s going to eat itself. Tasty, tasty, custard, pudding. You think you’re so smart! You think you can win! But my broken up brain is the one that made that machine, that terrible wonder.” He jammed his finger against the side of his head. “I made the plan and I put it in place, and if you hadn’t ruined it, I would have won. You’re always… You’re always in the way. But I can win.”

“Please,” John said precisely, enunciating every syllable. “Remain calm.”

“Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.”

John had to look away, shake his head. John could feel Grendel’s madness creeping in, his madness trying to claw its way through John’s eye sockets and in his ears. He still felt shaky, on vulnerable ground.

“I get to win. Just once. I get to win. It gets to be mine. I’m going to die and Moriarty, clever boy that he is, clever tractable boy, is going to descend on you and your little brats. Ravage them up nicely. And you’ll go mad all alone, just like me.”

“Let’s just talk calmly.”

Grendel laughed, laughed, and laughed. He looked at John and laughed again, holding his belly, his wide jagged mouth gaping toward the sky.

“You’ve seen my notes. Sometimes I’m sane, so sane that I can make everything work, it all lines up like little soldiers in my mind. Brilliance. Your last hope to go home is inside this battered shell.”

“Let me-” John tried, voicing carefully measured desperation in milliliters. 

“I just wanted you to know, to understand. To acknowledge I’m your only way home. That you’re going to go mad.”

“Dr. Grendel-”

Dr. Grendel pulled a gun out of his pocket and shot himself, a cloud of red and white. The side of Grendel’s head shattering open, the hand holding up the gun to his own head faltering. And Grendel’s eyes, huge startled eyes as if not expecting it himself, as if the parts of his body were working separate of each other, then an unremarkable collapse on the roof. John stood very precisely still, one hand still outstretched. The shock of it, the violent, victorious lift of the gun, the shock of the gunshot. The scrambling fall, without grace or beauty, the toppling of an animal so ugly it needed burning. Grendel’s body curled to the side, half lying on its folded limbs, seeping blood. Even as John hated Grendel, the explosive percussion of the gunshot burst like a phantom pain inside his head. 

John sighed. Pressed- Pressed his fingers against his eyes, his forehead. Everything rattled inside his head, the ghost of an impulse, the shattering vibration - He told himself everything was fine. That he was fine. That was the second step down. Dr. Grendel dead. He shook himself, loosened himself up. Tried to shake loose the last of the terrible two-edged Dr. Grendel, just as deadly sane as he was frothing dead. That was done; the biggest threat to Roost and Davey at the moment. If Bailey had destroyed all the notes as he’d been directed then that was half of the problem gone. The rest would be taken care of soon. Bart’s was the best location, enough people to see, not so many that someone might record something that Roost would see later.

All that was left was waiting for Mycroft. He paced, shook himself, tried to keep loose and stretched out. He needed to talk to Mycroft, arrange some things. He texted Davey quickly, **Didn’t have a chance to say. Good morning. I have a bit of business to take care of, you and Roost be safe. Much love. – W**

**Bit busy too. Finish up soon, I have other things to do today than wait for you. – BD**

John didn’t reply.

He could feel the awkward affection in the brusque little text as easily as if he was Davey himself. Shy, biting, and tender in parts. When his phone rang suddenly he answered without checking, absent and sorry for this, but there was nothing else he could do. There was- There was nothing else, there had to be a trade. He concentrated on Davey, razor sharp and achingly tender, heart on his sleeve and walls a mile thick covered in barbed wire. He thought on the light of curiosity Roost practically glowed with, a little bonsai lightning storm in a jar. Tim who believed and lost and trusted John. Who might never forgive John for this. But in drawing away Moriarty’s dangerous, fanatical, kamikaze fascination John had put Roost and Davey at risk. He was a sinkhole of danger it seemed. Someone would find a way to ruin him one way or the other. And he was scared, he was so scared.

But the world screamed inside him head, ripped into his brain. They were all so loud, and he was so tired. He blinked himself awake out of a daze. He wasn’t entirely sure how long he’d been staring.

“Hello?”

“W, Watson. I’ve been looking for you.”

Sherlock’s voice made John’s heart ache. But he was doing this in part for him, although it wouldn’t seem like it at first. “Oh,” he tried to keep his voice steady. “I had sudden business to attend to. How are you enjoying Italy?”

“It was a lot of busywork, and a lot of paperwork afterward. I’ve headed back.” That would throw things a little, but John had made allowances for everything.

“I _am_ back, I’m in London. At St. Bart’s.”

John’s blood ran cold. “What? Why?”

“You’re not your acute self today,” Sherlock sounded a mixture of amused and concerned. “Mycroft told me you where you were. He is useful for some things.”

“Oh,” John said. “Can you go back to Baker Street? I have something to take care of here.”

“No, no more running around. Where are you?”

“Sherlock-”

“Something’s wrong. What is it?”

John was running out of time.

“Please Sherlock, just-”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s so loud,” John whispered. “It’s so _very_ loud. You can’t imagine.”

“Tell me where you are,” Sherlock ordered, voice deep and familiar. 

The alarm on John’s watch went off. No choice now.

“Grendel killed himself, he’s on the roof. He needs to be burned as soon as possible.”

“You seem to be experiencing shock. Please remain calm. Tell me your location.”

John stepped up on the edge of the roof. Sherlock was on the other side of a wall, a basic calculation and John figured he’d be protected from the worst of it. But he could still see John up on the ledge, because of course he looked up now. He took a few rapid half-jogging steps forward, his breath ragged and confused in John’s ear. The bewildered panic sawed into John’s brain jaggedly; he swayed with it. 

A woman on a scooter, fiddling with her phone below, moved forward a short distance before stalling.

“No Sherlock,” John shook his head, even though he knew Sherlock probably couldn’t tell. “No, stay where you are. I don’t want you to see.”

“No,” Sherlock said. _”No.”_ He had the shaken voice of a child seated at the feet of an impossible death. “You’re not supposed to- Stop it. Stop it NOW!”

“It’s alright Sherlock,” John made a soft snuffling sound; watering eyes making his nose itch. “I knew this was coming. There’s nothing left to do.”

“There’s everything left to do! What are you _doing?_ ”

“I never wanted you to see this part. You were supposed to be in Italy.”

“Come down and I’ll tell you all about the case. You like hearing about my cases.” Sherlock’s rabbit fast breaths sliced John open, flayed him alive.

“Take care of Tim for me, Dimmock I mean,” John answered for something to say, he scuffed a hand across his face, a weary almost sleepy motion. “He gets guilty about everything. He’s not to drink. I mean it. He has to be checked on.”

“You can do that. You and John. The three of us.”

“I can’t. This is it. It’s done. Finished. If I live I will attract every criminal, every government agency, every great mind. The fight will never be over. I’m already so tired.”

“No, no.”

“Thank you, for being someone I could trust. You may not like to hear it, sentiment, but… I do appreciate it. It means a lot to really trust someone.”

“This is ridiculous. Stop playing, this game is cruel.”

“This isn’t a game Sherlock, this is my note. That’s what people always look for in these sorts of things, isn’t it? A note?”

Sherlock took a sudden wounded inhalation. A staggering step forward as if his coat had suddenly gained a thousand pounds.

“Please.”

“Tell them what you like. I was a madman. Megalomaniac. Someone else’s pawn. It doesn’t matter. Everything will unfold into nothing. There isn’t anyone to catch or anything left to find. Just me. I’m the only thing left to hide. W, the great and terrible.”

“You may not think I know much about love,” Sherlock said suddenly. “But I know you care about me.”

John took a sharp inhale, the sound of a wing through the air. The sound of someone shifting in their clothes. Fingertips against the pages of a book. “Promise me that if there’s anything left over to take care of, that you’ll take care of it. Not much left of the nest I built. Maybe a bit of wool.”

“I won’t, you might as well come down. Because I’m not promising.”

“If you won’t just leave, can’t you just do this last thing for me? Just one singular thing. And you can’t keep that promise.”

“Fine. Fine. I-”

“Goodbye Sherlock,” W said flatly. He could distantly hear Sherlock screaming below. Could see the woman on her scooter start around the corner as he tipped forward. Everything went bright and white then red, everything burning. He had hoped there wouldn’t be any fire for this part, but he supposed that was foolish. His whole body ached, his ears filled with sound. It hurt less than he thought it would.

 

Sherlock dropped his mobile.

He just-

He just-

The cars seemed loud this time of year.

They just were… It was loud. They were all honking their horns.

He was on the ground, rolling on the ground and people were shouting as he tried to move. Tried to stand. A woman with an Australian accent on a scooter kept getting in his way. When Sherlock looked at her he couldn’t tell anything about her. There was a sock puppet that had half fallen out of her pocket. He stared at its bright blue button eyes until she stuffed it back in again. She tilted up his chin, tried to check him for a concussion. He propped himself up on her scooter, stumbled toward the pavement at the foot of St Bart’s.

There was blood, he could see it in the spaces between people’s feet.

Where was the body? They shouldn’t, they shouldn’t look at W like that, they shouldn’t stand around and stare, they weren’t meant to see him. W was a secret. 

“Where?” he swallowed, someone was making soft sobbing sounds. “Where’s the b- Where is he?” He pushed through, _stumbled through_ , in time to see the pouring red and pink of W’s marvelous, marvelous head as they laid him on the stretcher. His back to Sherlock. He seemed so small. Smaller. Sherlock reached out, desperate, fingers slipping off W’s. W’s hand was so hot it almost burned him.

“No!” he screamed.

A nurse was there, speaking rapidly in heavily accented English, French in origin, Paris-   
_W_.

“I need to… I need to… Let me touch him, let me feel-” He lunged past the French nurse, hand just reaching far enough to slip across the warmth of the blood on the back of W’s hand. His hand was so hot. Observation rushed back and Sherlock could see it, see that W had landed and curled on his side. Sherlock would recognize the curl of the back of his neck anywhere. He could still feel a miniature version of it under his fingers. More recognizable than the lines of his face.

Sherlock keened. 

Some time passed. Probably.

Everything felt so strange, felt so very, very strange. Like he wasn’t attached to anything.

He was somewhere new and he didn’t know where. Mycroft was there, his face was very pale, and he was saying things.

“He faked his death, he must have. He must have faked his death,” Sherlock said. Everyone did these days.

“I’m sorry Sherlock. I wish. With all my heart,” Mycroft paused, did that ridiculous thing with his neck. “I made sure to see the body myself, while they were trying to – Gunshot wound to the shoulder, same place as you described W’s. It may have been for the best. He landed wrong on his- Well what he landed on doesn’t matter, but his head was - He wouldn’t have been himself. If he’d survived it would have been… unpleasant. Adair is supervising a few blood tests just to be sure, he’ll bring back the blood tests himself.”

Sherlock tried not gag.

Someone had taken him home because he was standing in front of 221B. “Maybe you shouldn’t-” Mycroft was saying. Sherlock turned around and _hit him._

“No,” Sherlock said. “No. This is home. I just, I just want to be home.” He paused, his hands shaking as he got out his keys. “Did you know, did you have any idea that he would do this?”

Mycroft’s silence drowned in consideration. Mycroft could never say one word when thinking a thousand would do. “I knew that he engineered a way to direct attention away from you by drawing attention to himself. With Moriarty and others when you started to bring attention to yourself. I had no reason to think he’d take his own life. And if I had I’d have sent you in the opposite direction.”

“Did he tell you where John is?”

“I would have told you. There’s still Watson’s irritatingly overprotective brother. He’ll know something.”

The key finally went into the lock and turned.

He climbed the stairs and- and everything was- it was still straightened from W’s visit. From when W had straightened his flat. He grabbed something and he _threw it_. It was all finished now, everything was finished. There was a sound from upstairs. A creaking of boards, a sound like a phantom limb. Sherlock ignored it.

There was a soft animal sound in response, a tiny tender _murr_ of a breath.

Sherlock stood very still. He breathed in. He breathed out. He took very careful steps forward, stoutly facing the skull, the mantelpiece, his pale horrified face, and very carefully made turns by degrees.

“Sherlock,” Mycroft said. “I am worried about you, please let me-”

“Shh,” Sherlock told him, not wanting to be wrong.

He looked, slowly and carefully at the chair facing his own and let out a shocked little breath and staggered.

There was John Watson, little dearest John, curled up and asleep, face troubled but form unblemished, other than a few raggedy edges. Carefully Sherlock knelt in front of him. He felt hyper aware. The fabric of his trousers against his knees, his toes curled in his shoes. The feel of John’s gentle little breaths against the skin of Sherlock’s wrist, held just close enough to know. There were two envelopes tucked under the pillow John was sleeping on. One labeled Sherlock, the other John. After a moment of looking at them he turned his attention back to the boy. He’d grown just a little. But then he never would be terribly tall so Sherlock supposed that was to be expected. 

Gently, he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to John’s forehead.

Mycroft may have said something again, but it was more of an exclamation of surprise so Sherlock ignored him.

“John’s safe now,” Sherlock whispered very softly, his breath wisping up the wheat coloured strands of John’s hair. “No one will bother him now that W is dead. But I don’t know if John knows yet. I’d like to just sit quietly with him for a while until he wakes up.”

Mycroft just stood there.

Sherlock looked down at John.

“Let’s just sit quietly,” Sherlock said again, delicately interlacing his fingers with the little hands curled up near a soft cheek. He closed his eyes and leaned close so he could feel John’s gentle breath against his hair.

It was John.

Safe again.

 

**  
Sherlock –**

**I am sincerely sorry for this, for anything you may have ended up seeing that I wanted to spare you. I’m sure you don’t believe in heroes, that you’d laugh the idea off. But let me tell you this, you were one of the best men and the most human human being I have ever known. No one could ever convince that I can’t trust you with this important duty, don’t doubt yourself again. He adores you. There was a way that John was alone before you that I could never fill. You are a good man, and I owe you so much. I did what was necessary to keep the people I love safe and I cannot regret it. I regret the loss, but the idea of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes together again just seems right. Thank you for all you’ve done for me.**

**Sincerely Yours,**

**W**


	25. Chapter 24 -TF

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been a magnificent journey, to be a bit cliche, and I'd like to thank everyone who supported the series, to sound a bit like an acceptance speech. I've really enjoyed this and hope that the last chapter is satisfactory. It is the ending that I feel is right for the series. Before we go any farther there is a TRIGGER WARNING: there is suicide by major characters, mental anguish, and discussion with a mentally unstable individual. I have tried to prepare an admittedly shorter, edited chapter right after this one. There is some unavoidable mention, but I've tried to make it as oblique and sideways as possible so to limit the effect. If you're still worried about being triggered please have a friend read over the chapter for you to be sure it won't interfere with your mental or emotional health. You heart and mind is important to me. <3
> 
> Once again, my tumblr is thursdayplaid.tumblr.com. Feel free to drop by. Please refrain from revealing the ending to anyone for a day or two, just so everyone has a chance to reach the end on their own terms.
> 
> Thank you for being part of the fun!

Chapter 24

Grendel burst onto the roof, ragged-breathed, eyes roving wildly. But John stood alone on the roof. Just John.

“You ran home then?” Grendel snarled at him. “Like a fox up a tree.”

John didn’t comment on that. “I needed to get out. I needed to get out.”

“And fix yourself? Undo the damage? Try to use my gun? _My_ gun.”

The view from the roof of St Bart’s was beautiful. John looked over it; the rooftops, the grey-blue London sky. He didn’t say anything. What could he be expected to say?

“If I can’t figure it out, you can’t figure it out. _You_ can’t figure it out. You’re going to go mad, your brain’s going to eat itself. Tasty, tasty, custard, pudding. You think you’re so smart! You think you can win! But my broken up brain is the one that made that machine, that terrible wonder.” He jammed his finger against the side of his head. “I made the plan and I put it in place, and if you hadn’t ruined it, I would have won. You’re always… You’re always in the way. But I can win.”

“Please,” John said precisely, enunciating every syllable. “Remain calm.”

“Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.”

John had to look away, shake his head. John could feel Grendel’s madness creeping in, his madness trying to claw its way through John’s eye sockets and in his ears. He still felt shaky, on vulnerable ground.

“I get to win. Just once. I get to win. It gets to be mine. I’m going to die and Moriarty, clever boy that he is, clever tractable boy, is going to descend on you and your little brats. Ravage them up nicely. And you’ll go mad all alone, just like me.”

“Let’s just talk calmly.”

Grendel laughed, laughed, and laughed. He looked at John and laughed again, holding his belly, his wide jagged mouth gaping toward the sky.

“You’ve seen my notes. Sometimes I’m sane, so sane that I can make everything work, it all lines up like little soldiers in my mind. Brilliance. Your last hope to go home is inside this battered shell.”

“Let me-” John tried, voicing carefully measured desperation in milliliters. 

“I just wanted you to know, to understand. To acknowledge I’m your only way home. That you’re going to go mad.”

“Dr. Grendel-”

Dr. Grendel committed suicide. 

John sighed. Pressed- Pressed his fingers against his eyes, his forehead. Everything rattled inside his head, the ghost of an impulse, the shattering vibration - He told himself everything was fine. That he was fine. That was the second step down. Dr. Grendel dead. He shook himself, loosened himself up. Tried to shake loose the last of the terrible two-edged Dr. Grendel, just as deadly sane as he was frothing dead. That was done; the biggest threat to Roost and Davey at the moment. If Bailey had destroyed all the notes as he’d been directed then that was half of the problem gone. 

All that was left was waiting for Mycroft. He paced, shook himself, tried to keep loose and stretched out. He needed to talk to Mycroft, arrange some things. He texted Davey quickly, **Didn’t have a chance to say. Good morning. I have a bit of business to take care of, you and Roost be safe. Much love. – W**

**Bit busy too. Finish up soon, I have other things to do today than wait for you. – BD**

John didn’t reply.

He could feel the awkward affection in the brusque little text as easily as if he was Davey himself. Shy, biting, and tender in parts. When his phone rang suddenly he answered without checking, absent and sorry for this, but there was nothing else he could do. There was- There was nothing else, there had to be a trade. He concentrated on Davey, razor sharp and achingly tender, heart on his sleeve and walls a mile thick covered in barbed wire. He thought on the light of curiosity Roost practically glowed with, a little bonsai lightning storm in a jar. Tim who believed and lost and trusted John. Who might never forgive John for this. But in drawing away Moriarty’s dangerous, fanatical, kamikaze fascination John had put Roost and Davey at risk. He was a sinkhole of danger it seemed. Someone would find a way to ruin him one way or the other. And he was scared, he was so scared.

But the world screamed inside him head, ripped into his brain. They were all so loud, and he was so tired. He blinked himself awake out of a daze. He wasn’t entirely sure how long he’d been staring.

“Hello?”

“W, Watson. I’ve been looking for you.”

Sherlock’s voice made John’s heart ache. But he was doing this in part for him, although it wouldn’t seem like it at first. “Oh,” he tried to keep his voice steady. “I had sudden business to attend to. How are you enjoying Italy?”

“It was a lot of busywork, and a lot of paperwork afterward. I’ve headed back.” That would throw things a little, but John had made allowances for everything.  
John was running out of time.

Sherlock appeared at the bottom of St. Bart having been told by Mycroft where W was. John tried to get him to leave but Sherlock resisted. 

“It’s so loud,” John whispered. “It’s so _very_ loud. You can’t imagine.”

“Tell me where you are,” Sherlock ordered, voice deep and familiar. 

The alarm on John’s watch went off. No choice now.

“Grendel killed himself, he’s on the roof. He needs to be burned as soon as possible.”

“You seem to be experiencing shock. Please remain calm. Tell me your location.”

John revealed he was on the roof. Sherlock became upset. 

A woman on a scooter, fiddling with her phone below, moved forward a short distance before stalling. 

Sherlock and John spoke over their phones, Sherlock was distressed, John said if he had to tell anybody anything to say that W was mad, or someone else’s pawn. He’s the only thing left to hide. 

“You may not think I know much about love,” Sherlock said suddenly. “But I know you care about me.”

John took a sharp inhale, the sound of a wing through the air. The sound of someone shifting in their clothes. Fingertips against the pages of a book. “Promise me that if there’s anything left over to take care of, that you’ll take care of it. Not much left of the nest I built. Maybe a bit of wool.”

 

 

Sherlock dropped his mobile.

He just-

He just-

The cars seemed loud this time of year.

They just were… It was loud. They were all honking their horns.

He was on the ground, rolling on the ground and people were shouting as he tried to move. Tried to stand. A woman with an Australian accent on a scooter kept getting in his way. When Sherlock looked at her he couldn’t tell anything about her. There was a sock puppet that had half fallen out of her pocket. He stared at its bright blue button eyes until she stuffed it back in again. She tilted up his chin, tried to check him for a concussion. He propped himself up on her scooter, stumbled toward the pavement at the foot of St Bart’s.

Sherlock made his way to the foot of St Bart’s he attempted to feel W’s pulse. He became very distressed. He felt alarmed at how small W looked curled up. 

Some time passed. Probably.

Everything felt so strange, felt so very, very strange. Like he wasn’t attached to anything.

He was somewhere new and he didn’t know where. Mycroft was there, his face was very pale, and he was saying things.

“He faked his death, he must have. He must have faked his death,” Sherlock said. Everyone did these days.

“I’m sorry Sherlock. I wish. With all my heart,” Mycroft paused, did that ridiculous thing with his neck. “I made sure to see the body myself. I'm certain it is him. Adair is supervising a few blood tests just to be sure, he’ll bring back the blood tests himself.”

Someone had taken him home because he was standing in front of 221B. “Maybe you shouldn’t-” Mycroft was saying. Sherlock turned around and _hit him._

“No,” Sherlock said. “No. This is home. I just, I just want to be home.” He paused, his hands shaking as he got out his keys. “Did you know, did you have any idea that he would do this?”

Mycroft’s silence drowned in consideration. Mycroft could never say one word when thinking a thousand would do. “I knew that he engineered a way to direct attention away from you by drawing attention to himself. With Moriarty and others when you started to bring attention to yourself. I had no reason to think he’d take his own life. And if I had I’d have sent you in the opposite direction.”

“Did he tell you where John is?”

“I would have told you. There’s still Watson’s irritatingly overprotective brother. He’ll know something.”

The key finally went into the lock and turned.

He climbed the stairs and- and everything was- it was still straightened from W’s visit. From when W had straightened his flat. He grabbed something and he _threw it_. It was all finished now, everything was finished. There was a sound from upstairs. A creaking of boards, a sound like a phantom limb. Sherlock ignored it.

There was a soft animal sound in response, a tiny tender _murr_ of a breath.

Sherlock stood very still. He breathed in. He breathed out. He took very careful steps forward, stoutly facing the skull, the mantelpiece, his pale horrified face, and very carefully made turns by degrees.

“Sherlock,” Mycroft said. “I am worried about you, please let me-”

“Shh,” Sherlock told him, not wanting to be wrong.

He looked, slowly and carefully at the chair facing his own and let out a shocked little breath and staggered.

There was John Watson, little dearest John, curled up and asleep, face troubled but form unblemished, other than a few raggedy edges. Carefully Sherlock knelt in front of him. He felt hyper aware. The fabric of his trousers against his knees, his toes curled in his shoes. The feel of John’s gentle little breaths against the skin of Sherlock’s wrist, held just close enough to know. There were two envelopes tucked under the pillow John was sleeping on. One labeled Sherlock, the other John. After a moment of looking at them he turned his attention back to the boy. He’d grown just a little. But then he never would be terribly tall so Sherlock supposed that was to be expected. 

Gently, he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to John’s forehead.

Mycroft may have said something again, but it was more of an exclamation of surprise so Sherlock ignored him.

“John’s safe now,” Sherlock whispered very softly, his breath wisping up the wheat coloured strands of John’s hair. “No one will bother him now that W is dead. But I don’t know if John knows yet. I’d like to just sit quietly with him for a while until he wakes up.”

Mycroft just stood there.

Sherlock looked down at John.

“Let’s just sit quietly,” Sherlock said again, delicately interlacing his fingers with the little hands curled up near a soft cheek. He closed his eyes and leaned close so he could feel John’s gentle breath against his hair.

It was John.

Safe again.

 

**  
Sherlock –**

**I am sincerely sorry for this, for anything you may have ended up seeing that I wanted to spare you. I’m sure you don’t believe in heroes, that you’d laugh the idea off. But let me tell you this, you were one of the best men and the most human human being I have ever known. No one could ever convince that I can’t trust you with this important duty, don’t doubt yourself again. He adores you. There was a way that John was alone before you that I could never fill. You are a good man, and I owe you so much. I did what was necessary to keep the people I love safe and I cannot regret it. I regret the loss, but the idea of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes together again just seems right. Thank you for all you’ve done for me.**

**Sincerely Yours,**

**W**


End file.
